Why does Akron resident Chris Bryant leap over cars? The answer is in his Nike ad. Bryant, 23, appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" Monday, Dec. 17, to debut his ad and a pair of Nike shoes --size 11 Shox NZ -- that he helped design.

"Nobody asks LeBron James why he dunks the way he does," Bryant says in the ad as he's shown leaping over cars parked in his way as he runs through neighborhoods.

When: First part at 9 p.m. Sunday; second and third parts at 9 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. Repeats at 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. all three nights, and the previous night's episode repeats at 7 p.m. Mon day through Wednesday.

Where: Sci Fi Channel.

There's a Yellow Brick Road and an adorable pooch named Toto, but there's nothing all that merry about the land of Oz in the Sci Fi Channel's "Tin Man." Judy Garland wouldn't recognize the place.

In this three-part science-fiction re-imagining of L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz," that magical place over the rainbow becomes a dark and forbidding futuristic landscape. Dorothy Gale, named DG and played by Zooey Deschanel in "Tin Man," is a waitress ripped from her workaday life to "the other side" by a tornado.

Oz is now O.Z., the initials for the Outer Zone. The Wicked Witch holding this O.Z. in a grip of fear is an evil sorceress named Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson), and her winged Mobats (monkey bats) are spies sniffing out resistance fighters.

Alex Matter in 2005 with two of the disputed paintings some art historians have attributed to Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock. Scientist James Martin said Wednesday that a pigment he found on five of the paintings has been identified positively by its manufacturer, making it certain the material could not have been available to Pollock. But Martin stressed he wasn't advancing any specific theory regarding the origin of the paintings.

New York -- A forensic scientist said Wednesday that fraud can't be ruled out as a possible explanation for evidence he found while studying a group of recently discovered paintings attributed by some art historians to Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock.

The scientist, James Martin, said publicly for the first time that the initials "JP," found on the back of one of the paintings, were written atop a layer of pigment that wasn't patented until 1977 -- and most likely was not available until the 1980s. Pollock died in 1956.

Martin said the pigment, which he found on five paintings, has been identified positively by its manufacturer, making it certain the material could not have been available to Pollock.

Martin, the owner of Orion Analytical in Williamstown, Mass., stressed that he wasn't accusing any particular individual or advancing any specific theory regarding the origin of the paintings.

"I need to be clear," he said in a symposium at the National Academy in New York, sponsored by the International Foundation for Art Research, also known as IFAR. "I am not saying there has been a fraud here."

But he said his analysis "must at least include consideration of the possibility that an intentionally misleading object was created."

During the early 1960s, an unknown singer named Barbra Streisand spent a week in Cleveland co-hosting a local talk show called "The Mike Douglas Show." The money wasn't great, so Streisand sang at a local nightspot to make a little extra.

The Cleveland origins of the show are part of "Mike Douglas: Moments and Memories," a documentary special airing on WVIZ Channel 25 at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2, and repeating at 6 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 8.

Mike Douglas, host of the "The Mike Douglas Show." The show's history is remembered in "Mike Douglas: Moments and Memories," airing Sunday at 6:30 p.m. on WVIZ Channel 25.

The 90-minute program features black-and-white clips from its Cleveland days, performances and interviews with Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Yoko Ono, Della Reese and Gene Simmons.

Since it airs during pledge week, a two-hour DVD version of "Mike Douglas: Moments and Memories" will be offered as a pledge-drive incentive.

Open sleighs pulled by a horse. Urging folks to go tell the tale on a mountain. A baby born in a barn, for cryin' out loud. No wonder Nashville seems to have corralled the holiday music world, at least for now.

Admittedly, back in Der Bingle's day, it might have belonged to Crosby et al. Country music's audience was limited to people who actually lived in them thar hills or the few whose Philcos were regularly tuned to "The Grand Ole Opry" or "The Louisiana Hayride."

Toby Keith (in white hat, of course) has joined the country Christmas brigade with a double CD this season.

But spats and top hats have given way to boots and Stetsons, even in the Big City. If you're looking for Christmas music today, you'll find the country bins at your local Best Buy filled to their jingle bells with holiday music.

The average CD weighs less than a regular letter (another throwback to the days of bore, er, Yore). Yet the quantity of country CDs featuring holiday music is easier weighed in pounds than numbers.

Imagine you're a Hollywood director. You want a certain actor to be your action hero, but the part requires him to look decades younger and pounds thinner. It can be done through the magic of motion capture technology. That process allowed "Beowulf" director Robert Zemeckis to cast Ray Winstone as Beowulf, a character who appeared on screen as taller, younger and more muscular.

Motion capture technology is the latest advancement in the filmmaker's quest to trick the eye. It can be used in an entire movie, such as "Beowulf" and "The Polar Express," or for one character in a live-action movie, such as Gollum in "Lord of the Rings."

The characters of "Beowulf" comes to life on film through the magic of motion-capture technology.

Motion, or performance, capture technology is a way of recording an actor's movements and applying those movements to a different, digital character, said Jerome Chen, senior visual effects supervisor on "Beowulf."

"All this technology is an artistic tool," said Chen, who is part of Sony Pictures Imageworks, a digital production studio based in Culver City, Calif., which used its Imagemotion performance capture system on the movie.

Randy Pausch provided the ultimate in online learning when he gave the world the last word in last lectures. "Last lectures," which have become popular on college campuses, are delivered by professors as hypothetical parting words or summations, as if they were the last talks they'd ever give.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION / BILL KENNEDY THE PLAIN DEALER

Pausch, a 46-year-old computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, delivered his on Sept. 18, after learning he had pancreatic cancer and had months to live. The two-hour lecture has drawn worldwide attention, and Pausch gave a 10-minute version of it on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Millions saw him there. Millions more heard and saw his talk online, where numerous excerpts on YouTube highlighted his lessons and advice: "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." "When you are screwing up, and no one is saying anything, it means that everyone has given up on you." "Wait long enough, sometimes a very long time, and people will surprise and impress you."

PROF. RANDY PAUSCH'S LAST LECTURE

As a lecture in how to live, it was the ultimate how-to video and a reminder that YouTube and similar sites are more than just funny videos, pranks, bloopers and home movies.

You can learn other lessons there, too -- useful and useless, serious and silly, everyday and arcane. Things your parents didn't teach you, things you missed in school, things you were afraid to ask and things you'd learn only from countless hours hanging out with the right people.

But let us pause to pay homage to Marie Osmond. With her equine grin and tragic back story -- papa Osmond died during the competition and she passed out cold before the judges could critique her clumsy samba -- the Mormon mama made the show worth watching.

During her first routine on Monday, she wore yellow and black and buzzed around the stage like a demented bee.

But it was her Baby-Jane-meets-Bride-of-Chucky turn in the freestyle segment -- she wore pink ruffles and make-up by Tammy Faye Baker -- that knocked her out of tonight's finale mercifully early. Back to selling dolls on QVC.

When he was growing up in Indianapolis, and before he was Babyface, Kenny Edmonds' friends gave him another nickname -- Waterfall. "It wasn't actually a compliment," he says.

The moniker was prompted by his musical tastes, which, counter to the R&B and funk that was most popular in his circle, ran more toward melodic pop hits by singer-songwriters such as James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg and groups such as Bread -- the material that populates his latest album, "Playlist."

"People were like, 'All you do is play that waterfall music. You don't know nothin' 'bout funk,' " the 49-year-old artist, songwriter and producer says. "That wasn't a good thing at the time. It was like you weren't black enough. You weren't funk enough.

"It wasn't that I didn't listen to [funky] things. I was a fan of the Jackson 5 and James Brown and P-Funk. I'd listen to them. And Stevie Wonder. But Stevie Wonder did beautiful songs, too, and I liked those just as much."

Babyface, of course, got his R&B credentials in short order -- first with the groups Manchild and the Deele and then as one of the most successful songwriters and producers of the past two decades, winning three straight Grammy Awards for producer of the year for his work with Mary J. Blige, Boyz II Men, TLC, Toni Braxton, Brandy, Pebbles, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and many others. Add pop forays with Madonna, Eric Clapton, Celine Dion and more to the mix, and there's a track record of 125 Top 10 pop and R&B chart hits.

But to this day, Babyface defends that early, much-maligned taste for soft rock.

"These songs were, like, my major influences, songs I tried to learn how to play," he says. "The interesting thing is a lot of these songs, the black audience knows them just as much as the white audience -- James Taylor to Jim Croce to Bob Dylan to Eric Clapton, these are familiar to black people as well. So it's just not R&B.

"And a lot of these artists I liked, they're not as white bread as it seemed. James Taylor . . . he's really soulful. He's got a lot of heart in what he does. That's what I connected to; I saw through the color lines and said, 'Wait a minute, this guy's really smooth.' "

"Playlist," which debuted at No. 48 on the Billboard charts when it was released in September, features two Taylor songs ("Shower the People" and "Fire and Rain") as well as tracks by Clapton (with whom Babyface won the 1996 Grammy for record of the year for "Change the World"), Croce, Dylan and Fogelberg. Brandy joins him for Dave Loggins' "Please Come to Boston," and there are also two originals in the same sonic vein.

"I feel like it was something I need to do," Babyface says. "I didn't want to just do another R&B record or any particular kind of record. I just wanted to do something I enjoyed.

"Ultimately, I feel like it's shown another side of me that people weren't aware of, but I think as they listen to it, it makes sense to them how these songs influenced me in the music I've ultimately done and the work I've done with other people. This has opened the door for me to just experiment and do any kind of music I want."

Dave Garroway, the first host of "The Today Show," retired in 1961. Johnny Carson ended his 30-year run as host of "The Tonight Show" in 1992. Even the venerable Walter Cronkite eventually stepped down as anchor of "The CBS Evening News." Somehow, their shows and networks managed to survive.

So will Food Network, when Emeril Lagasse bids adieu to his last studio audience Tuesday, Dec. 11. That's the night Lagasse -- the Bam-meister himself -- hosts his final "Emeril Live," one of the network's highest-rated programs.

With that announcement comes the inevitable doomsaying. Namely, is Food Network doomed?

"First, Sara Moulton, then Mario Batali and now Emeril," wrote Bob Sassone on Tvsquad.com. "Who will be next to go? Alton Brown? Sandra Lee? Bobby Flay?"

Tickets: $40.50-$80.50 at the box of fice and Tickets.com outlets, or charge by phone, 1-800-766-6048 or 216-241-6000.

"Deck the Halls," meet Hall & Oates. On tour with a 12-piece band, the blue-eyed soul duo plans to mix seasonal fare with a few Top 40 hits in concert. Daryl Hall, 59, and John Oates, 58, filled us in recently in separate phone interviews.

'Home' for the holidays

Their first holiday album, "Home for Christmas," is now in stores everywhere, following a limited release last year.

Hall: It's almost like it's not really a Christmas album, but a Hall & Oates album that happens to have Christmas songs. We wanted to do something that had our particular sound.

Oates: If you make a great Christmas album, it can be out there for years and years to come.

Reason for the season

When Hall & Oates aren't warbling original tunes -- the title track and "No Child Should Ever Cry on Christmas," respectively -- on the album, they don't shy away from religious material, including "The First Noel" and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."

Hall: You can do "Frosty the Snowman," or you can get real with it. I really wanted to do an album that gave the true inspiration of what the holiday means, not the commercial thing it has become.

Oates: You can be as politically correct as you want, but in the end, it's a Christian holiday. We wanted to be respectful of the tradition of those standards, but at the same time, we adapted some lyrics to make them more universal and up-to-date, hopefully without losing the traditional qualities.

A child's Christmas in, er, Philadelphia

Music filled the air for these guys during yules past.

Hall: I grew up singing Christmas songs in church. I recorded "Mary Had a Baby" because it's one of the earliest songs I remember from being a little kid. It was on some folk compilation my family used to play around the house every Christmas.

Oates: I grew up in an Italian family, so we always had that Italian thing going on, the Mario Lanza and Frank Sinatra versions of Christmas.

The kids love 'em!

Lately, Hall & Oates have been getting name-checked by members of hip young bands such as Gym Class Heroes and Death Cab for Cutie.

Hall: I feel gratified. I've always said, music is a continuum. What I do is partly my own brain and partly what I take from the past, from people I looked up to. I'm glad to be part of that continuum, now that people are doing the same thing with my music.

Oates: It's a great feeling to know you're appreciated, that another generation is willing to come out and give you your props. We did the same thing with the Temptations in the '80s. We brought Eddie Kendrick and David Ruffin out of obscurity and played at the Apollo Theater with them, because their music influenced us.

New year's resolutions

Hall & Oates have solo pursuits in the works for 2008.

Hall: I'm very active in getting "Live From Daryl's House" off the ground, which is my Internet concert series. [Check out www.livefromdarylshouse.com.] It's all free. Every month, there's going to be a new concert, with various guests. I can bring people who I grew up listening to, and new bands, into my world. I know Travis [McCoy] from Gym Class Heroes. He'll be one of my first guests on the show.

Oates: I've been developing a one-man show called "The Story Behind the Songs." It's just me, a guitar and a microphone. I love that.

Actor Richard Thomas is best known for his portrayal in the 1970s of John Boy, the central figure in "The Waltons" TV series. But among the cognoscenti of his craft, Thomas is known as one of the smartest, most articulate actors.

JOAN MARCUS

Richard Thomas of "The Waltons" fame comes to Cleveland Tuesday to play Juror No. 8 in the national tour of the Broadway production of "Twelve Angry Men." Henry Fonda played the part in the classic 1957 Sidney Lumet film.

Still boyish at 56, Thomas comes to Cleveland Tuesday to play another legendary role, Juror No. 8 in the national tour of the Broadway production of Reginald Rose's "Twelve Angry Men." It opens at 7:30 p.m. at Playhouse Square's Palace Theatre.

This time, however, it's a part that was made a legend by another actor: Henry Fonda, who played it in the 1957 Sidney Lumet film.

Thomas says he's up to the role of a man who finds himself in a one-to-11 minority in a murder trial jury room. In fact, he thinks this 2004 production -- directed by Scott Ellis and produced by the nonprofit Roundabout Theatre -- of Rose's 1964 stage version improves on the movie.

Long before he became John Boy, Thomas had already established his bona fides as a performer.

He was born into show business, in New York, the son of a pair of dancers. He debuted on Broadway at age 7, the year after the film "Twelve Angry Men" was released. In 1959, he made the first of many appearances on television.

He has worked steadily onstage (in New York and Hartford, Conn.), and in other media ever since. But this is his first national tour.

We caught up with Thomas at his home in New York while he was on hiatus for Thanksgiving week. Here are excerpts from the conversation.

ABC has waltzed through the fall, due mostly to the continuing popularity of "Dancing With the Stars." And with the two-night fifth-season finale airing at 8 p.m. Monday and 9 p.m. Tuesday on WEWS Channel 5, the Alphabet Network is more than happy to see its high-stepping reality hit taking the lead.

The powerful Monday edition of the dance-floor phenomenon helped turn Christina Applegate's "Samantha Who?" into the season's highest-rated new show. It also provided a solid promotional base for such other fast-starting rookie series as "Pushing Daisies," "Private Practice," "Dirty Sexy Money" and "Women's Murder Club."

ABC is solidly in second place both in terms of total viewers (usually won by CBS) and the 18-to-49 age demographic prized by advertisers (usually won by Fox). Its red-hot reality rumba's Nielsen numbers have a great deal to do with that success.

The Nutcracker flashes his sword at the terrible Mouse King in Act I of Dennis Nahat's version of "The Nutcracker," which Ballet San Jose performs at the State Theatre through Sunday.

DANCE REVIEW Ballet San Jose

Dennis Nahat's extravagant and wayward production of "The Nutcracker" was a mainstay of Cleveland's holiday season from its Cleveland Ballet debut in 1979 until 1999. A year later, the joint venture that had come to be known as Cleveland San Jose Ballet closed shop here, leaving San Jose to seize "Nutcracker" as its own.

Ballet San Jose continues to do so to generally buoyant effect, as Cleveland is learning these days at the State Theatre. The California troupe has returned its artistic and executive director's "Nutcracker" to home turf for the first time in eight years (through Sunday), bringing along several former Cleveland Ballet eminences and a production brimming with color.

Three couples enter, but only one leaves victorious when television's ratings powerhouse "Dancing With the Stars" bestows its fifth-season crown Tuesday night. Melanie Brown (Scary Spice of the Spice Girls) and partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy; Helio Castroneves (two-time Indianapolis 500 champion) and professional partner Julianne Hough; and Marie Osmond (actresss/singer) and professional partner Jonathan Roberts out-waltzed and outlasted the original field of 12 to face off in the final rounds.

The drumbeat begins Monday night, when each couple performs two dances and phone lines opened for voting. Tuesday night's two-hour show begins with the elimination of the the third-place contestant. The remaining couples will select a favorite past routine as their last dance. The judges' cumulative scores will be combined with viewers' votes and judges scores from the previous night to determine the winner.

The architectural history of Cleveland is never as simple as it looks. It's true that conservative local clients shunned the work of pioneering Chicago Modernists such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well as Eliel and Eero Saarinen of Detroit.

It's also true that if you used Cleveland buildings to tell time throughout the 20th century, you would have run late by about 15 years. Local clients rarely embraced novel ideas until they were well-tested elsewhere and, hence, no longer novel.

But that doesn't mean that Modernism was entirely absent from Northeast Ohio.

On the contrary, a few architecturally brave souls started building Modernist houses in Greater Cleveland before World War II. These include the 1938 Burdick House in Cleveland Heights, known for the extensive use of glass block windows on its first floor.

The Burdick house and roughly two dozen other Modernist dwellings built through the 1970s are the subject of a stimulating but ultimately thin exhibition at the Beck Center in Lakewood, entitled, "Cleveland Goes Modern: Design for the Home, 1930-1970."

Organized for the Cleveland Artists Foundation by a committee led by independent scholar and writer Nina Gibans, the show raises awareness about the Modernist house designs of local architects such as John Terrence Kelly, Don Hisaka, Robert A. Little and Ernst Payer.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the host of Laugh Track, a man who is easing out of his Thanksgiving food coma on a turkey gravy IV drip . . . Mike McIntyre.

Thank you, Cleveland! I am stuffed! Really, I couldn't eat another bite. Not even one teeny, tiny little . . . hey, is that pie?

What the hell is wrong with you?Tammy Pescatelli, the Perry native and "Last Comic Standing" alumnus, has struck a nerve with the catchphrase that questions why people are so stupid. And she finds new material every day.

"Every day it's something new," she said. "I was reading about the guy in Florida who burglarized a car and while running from police he jumped into a lake that said "Dangerous Crocodiles" and they ate him. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Pescatelli is in town for Thanksgiving with the family, which is about to get bigger. Recently married, she's expecting her first child in March.

"My agent was worried. He said, "I've never seen a woman onstage pregnant before." I told him: Apparently, you've never been to a strip club in the South."

Pescatelli is set to shoot another comedy special and is pitching studios on a reality show -- a red-hot property if the writers' strike drags on -- that she describes as "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" meets "Comic Relief."

A band of comics rides into town and has 48 hours to arrange, promote and perform a benefit show to help someone. In the pilot episode that Pescatelli is showing networks, the crew helped a woman whose husband is fighting in Iraq. When she was at the mall, someone broke into her car and stole her child's stroller and car seat. The comics raised $3,800 to help her.

Pescatelli also has a part in a "Goodfellas" spinoff movie that focuses on a college basketball point-shaving scandal that mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill orchestrated. It shoots next spring, after the baby is born.

Details: Pescatelli performs at 8 and 10:15 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Improv in the Powerhouse, 2000 Sycamore St., on the west bank of Cleveland's Flats. Tickets are $16. Call 216-696-4677.

MOVIES"No Country for Old Men": One of the best films of the year by far. Joel and Ethan Coen channel Cormac McCarthy's gritty novel into a masterful movie about a stash of cash, a mad chase and a mad killer. Javier Bardem is mesmerizing as the latter. Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and relative newcomer Kelly MacDonald also deliver terrific performances. Be warned: It's very violent. - R for strong graphic violence and language. 123 minutes. Grade: A -- Clint O'Connor / Plain Dealer Movie Critic

Devil Doll, aka Colleen Duffy.

MUSICDevil Doll is the stage name of Colleen Duffy, a Cleveland native (now based in Los Angeles) who specializes in torch songs with a rockabilly edge. On tour behind her feisty new album, "The Return of Eve," she headlines a show at 9 p.m. Saturday at the Beachland Ballroom and Tavern, 15711 Waterloo Road, Cleveland, in the ballroom. Uncle Scratch's Gospel Revival and Martini 5-O open. Tickets are $10. Call 216-383-1124. -- John Soeder / Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic

Norman Rockwell's "Triple Self-Portrait."

ARTS
Is this good timing or what? Norman Rockwell created America's most famous painting of Thanksgiving. And now the Akron Art Museum is showing "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell," a touring exhibition organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. The show debuted in Akron on Nov. 10 and continues through Sunday, Feb. 3. On view are original paintings, as well as tear sheets of covers from the Saturday Evening Post, for which Rockwell was famous. 1 South High St.. Admission is $10 for adults, with discounts for those 65 and older, students, tours and museum members. Call 330-376-9185.-- Steven Litt / Plain Dealer Art Critic

Canadian twins Tegan and Sara certainly engendered a bit of envy as their 2004 album "So Jealous" made a significant footprint in the pop world -- particularly via the single "Walking With a Ghost." And the way that success happened mitigated some of the pressure on the pair as they made their new album, "The Con," which has sold more than 80,000 copies since its release in July.

"It was during our time off that things got bigger, when we actually were off the road," says Sara Quinn, 27, who wrote "Walking With a Ghost" -- which was subsequently covered by the White Stripes. "We were like, 'Wow, our MySpace is really out of control. People are still playing the song.' And then we had TV shows, like 'Grey's Anatomy,' still playing our music.

"So there was less pressure to make ['The Con']. Sometimes when you're off the road, you think, like, 'Geez, people are gonna forget about us. Let's hurry!' But this time, it was like, 'This is great. People still think we're active,' so we have plenty of time to write the songs, demo them, explore how we really wanted the album to be."

That's a somewhat involved process, however. The twins live in different cities -- Sara lives in Montreal, Tegan in Vancouver, British Columbia -- and write independently. But Sara says they still trade sound files over the Internet, experiment with parts on each other's songs and bounce ideas and suggestions off each other.

Warning: Robin Williams is in this movie. He plays a "helpful" stranger. He is miscast. The good news: Robin Williams does not ruin this movie. Now, on with the review.

"August Rush" is a charming little fairy tale of a film that celebrates the music playing inside of all of us. With violence and dark themes raging on nearly every movie screen, this family friendly drama from director Kirsten Sheridan is a refreshing relief.

Sheridan -- who was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar for co-writing "In America" with her sister and director dad, Jim -- has created a sweet, touching film that will warm hearts. If you're willing to play along.

The great Freddie Highmore (Peter in "Finding Neverland") stars as Evan, an 11-year-old orphan living in a county home for boys. Some force deep inside tells him that his parents are coming for him, that they didn't really discard him. It drives his whole existence, but he is inspired by something greater that pushes him to search for them in New York: music.

Based on the song by Johnny Marks, "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" introduced the songs "A Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Silver and Gold" (both performed by Burl Ives). The puppet extravaganza notches another holiday season on Tuesday, Dec. 4.

With production on scripted comedies and dramas paralyzed by the 2-week-old writers strike, the networks are only too happy to welcome the ghosts of Christmases past. They'll get through the rest of the year with the help of George Bailey and his wings-challenged guardian angel, Charlie Brown and his needle-dropping Christmas tree, the Grinch and his plan to boo-hoo the Whos and Rudolph and his crimson schnoz.

The annual Thanksgiving-to-New Year parade of holiday programming couldn't have arrived too soon for the networks. It's the gift that keeps on giving, providing viewer-friendly choices while delaying the impact of strike shortfalls until January.

So you might be noticing more ho-ho holiday options than ever before. And cable has piled the new stuff higher than the Grinch's sleigh on his trip to Mount Crumpit. Channels such as Nickelodeon, Hallmark, ABC Family, Home & Garden Television, DIY and the Food Network go almost wall-to-wall with their season's greetings as Christmas approaches.

It has become impossible to list all the holiday programming. Even with a fresh battalion of elves, Santa Claus couldn't keep up with a list that long. This year, the spotlight is on 10 holiday viewing traditions, with a roundup of new and notable options.

"American Idol" alum Chris Daughtry scored big at last night's American Music Awards.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- "American Idol" alumni came out on top at the American Music Awards as Daughtry, the band fronted by ex-"Idol" loser Chris Daughtry, shared the triple-winner spotlight with "Idol" champ Carrie Underwood.

Daughtry capitalized on its three nominations to win favorite pop-rock album for its self-titled debut, as well as breakthrough artist and adult contemporary artist honors.

"I want to make sure we thank the fans again because you guys made this all possible for us," the band's frontman said.

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION An animation team, led by former Northeast Ohioan Jeff Wagner, digitally designed the bee hive where Barry (voice of Jerry Seinfeld), left, and his best friend Adam (Matthew Broderick) have to choose the job they'll do for the rest of their lives.

DreamWorks Animation's Jeff Wagner knows perfectly well that bees don't dress in tiny sweaters, sit on couches or collect pollen in giant guns. He created a world in which all those things seem perfectly logical for "Bee Movie."

As a senior modeler, he had to balance aesthetics against realism.

"Our way is more visually pleasing," said Wagner, 34.

"Bee Movie," in theaters, is about Barry Bee Benson (voice of Jerry Seinfeld), a young bee who rebels against choosing the job he'll do for the rest of his life in the hive. During an adventure outside the hive, Barry meets florist Vanessa (Renee Zellweger) and also learns that humans steal honey from bees. Barry vows to correct this injustice.

Wagner, who grew up in Brunswick and is the son of Plain Dealer reporter Joe Wagner, digitally sculpted the beehive factory, flowers, bee "pollen jocks" and background women characters. He worked on "Bee Movie" from August 2005 to June 2007 and fleshed out the film's design with Seinfeld.

Dennis Nahat, artistic/executive director of Ballet San Jose, right, will dance Godfather Drosselmeyer in select performances of his version of "The Nutcracker" this week and next at the State Theatre. Shown with him are former Cleveland Ballet member Roni Mahler, left, as Helga, and an unidentified dancer.

Something is familiar, and possibly peculiar, about the following scenario:

"The Nutcracker" at the State Theatre in Playhouse Square.

Dennis Nahat choreography.

Karen Gabay and Raymond Rodriguez among the dancers.

Have we returned to the 20th century? Are visions of Cleveland Ballet dancing in our heads?

No, we're not talking Cleveland Ballet or even the subsequent joint venture known as Cleveland San Jose Ballet.

Direct from California comes Ballet San Jose, which takes up residence this week and next at the State Theatre to perform Nahat's lavish production of "The Nutcracker."

For more than 25 years, Nahat was a major presence here as artistic director of Cleveland Ballet, for which he created his popular "Nutcracker," and then Cleveland San Jose Ballet, as the company was redubbed in 1986.

Chris Stephens/The Plain DealerChip Tha Ripper, Al Fatz and Young Ray -- seen here in silhouette, from left -- are ready to prove Cleveland's hip-hop scene is worthy of the national spotlight.

It's a Friday night in early November, and Peabody's is off the hook. Fans are lined up dozens deep outside the downtown Cleveland club, waiting to enter. Inside, speakers throb and a racially mixed crowd grooves to the tag-team raps of two charismatic MCs.

Together with Young Ray, another up-and-comer on the local scene, they're looking to put Cleveland back on the hip-hop map in a big way, more than a decade after the Grammy-winning rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony did us proud.

"We have more opportunity here than ever before," Al says. "The spotlight has been on so many other places," Chip says. "We get overlooked, but we have a lot of good music in Cleveland."

Al and Chip are the rising stars of Dreamlife Productions, a fledgling local music company run by LeBron James' pal Rich "Revenue" Paul. Al and Chip are solo artists, although they often work together. They joined forces to record "Double Trouble," a new album being released Tuesday, Nov. 27, by Dreamlife.

Ray is signed to Brooks Entertainment Group, a separate company operated by Dreamlife partner Leonard Brooks. Ray has collaborated with Al and Chip, too -- no vicious hip-hop beefs here.

How's your tolerance meter for blood, depravity and death? This holiday season, multiplexes will overflow with dark themes. It starts today with the Coen brothers take on Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men," pulsating with shotgun splatterings courtesy of Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin.

It's an excellent film by the way, but Hollywood, holding up a mirror to our war-torn times, is obsessed of late with the serious, ponderous and depressing.

Between Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas day, Greater Cleveland will be deluged with heavy films, Oscar hopefuls, and a smidgen of sequels. One of them, "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem," bears the telling tagline: "This Christmas there will be no peace on Earth!"

Wednesday, Nov. 21

"Enchanted"Cast: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden. Buzz: This one looks like fun. Animated fairy-tale characters transform and warp into the realm of actual humans in Manhattan, led by a fantastically effervescent Amy Adams.

"I'm Not There"Cast: Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale. Buzz: Bob Dylan fans of the world unite! This bizarre concoction from director Todd Haynes delivers six actors as sort-of Bobs during iconic moments in his life.

"This Christmas"Cast: Delroy Lindo, Idris Elba, Loretta Devine. Buzz: The six Whitfield children are headed home for Christmas with their mom (Loretta Devine), which guarantees a certain level of love, laughter and dysfunction.

"August Rush"Cast: Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell. Buzz: The great Freddie Highmore ("Finding Neverland") stars as an abandoned kid who uses his musical talents to survive on the streets of New York.

"Hitman"Cast: Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko. Buzz: Agent 47 kills people for a living and must dodge Interpol and the Russian military. Based on the video game.

"The Mist"Cast: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden. Buzz: Not all of Stephen King's works have become great films, but the good news for "The Mist" is that director Frank Darabont is behind the camera ("The Green Mile," "The Shawshank Redemption"). This time he tackles King's tale of townspeople battling creepy creatures in the local grocery store. Clean up on aisle five!

Friday, Nov. 30

"Sleuth"Cast: Jude Law, Michael Caine. Buzz: The original film version of Anthony Shaffer's play was a spectacular showdown between Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier. Now, Caine returns in the Olivier role as a mystery novelist who ensnares his wife's lover (Jude Law in Caine's old role) in dangerous schemes. It boasts an impressive pedigree -- multitalented director Kenneth Branagh and a screenplay from Harold Pinter no less. But let's see if it can unseat the 1972 version, which had its own creative lion on board, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, directing his final film.

Friday, Dec. 7

"The Golden Compass"Cast: Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliot, Eva Green, Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig. Buzz: This season's fantasy-adventure epic, from the pages of Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights," charts a 12-year-old girl's rescue mission through an alternative world. Could be a winner. Besides, it features both of the Ians: McKellen and McShane.

Wednesday, Dec 12

"The Perfect Holiday"Cast: Gabrielle Union, Morris Chestnut, Khail Bryant. Buzz: A young girl tries to brighten her divorced mom's holiday season with help from a department store Santa.

Friday, Dec. 14

"I Am Legend"Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok. Buzz: A horrible virus has wiped out millions and left one man alone in New York, scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith). Things get all lonely and freaky as Neville tries to find other survivors.

"Margot at the Wedding"Cast: Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black. Buzz: Depressive realist Noah Baumbach, who scored in 2005 with the quite brilliant "The Squid and the Whale," returns with another raw, honest look at a dysfunctional family, this one led by two sisters, Pauline and Margot (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nicole Kidman).

"The Kite Runner"Cast: Khalid Abdalla, Homayon Ershadi, Zekeria Ebrahimi. Buzz: You might worry about ruining the book and all that, but Khaled's Hosseini's best seller about friendship and fear is safeguarded by the very respectful Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland," "Monster's Ball").

"National Treasure: Book of Secrets"Cast: Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Helen Mirren. Buzz: The gang is back from the fun adventure flick "National Treasure." This time, a missing page from John Wilkes Booth's diary sets off a great global search.

Tuesday, Dec. 25

"The Great Debaters"Cast: Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Jurnee Smollett. Buzz: Denzel hasn't directed a film since "Antwone Fisher," but he couldn't resist this true story of Prof. Melvin Tolson and his underdog debate team that took on Harvard in the 1930s.

"Charlie Wilson's War"Cast: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Buzz: Based on the true story of the playboy Texas congressman who helped Afghan rebels defeat the Soviet Union. This Oscar-coveting drama features an A-list cast and a script by Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing").

"Alien vs. Predator: Requiem"Cast: John Ortiz, Steven Pasquale, Johnny Lewis. Buzz: This time, warring alien and predator forces duke it out in a small town.

"Juno"Cast: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner. Buzz: Mega-praise at the Toronto International Film Festival has propelled "Juno," about a pregnant teen's search for adoptive parents, into a holiday must-see.

Also in December: Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen experience "anesthetic awareness" in the medical thriller "Awake." . . . Bickering siblings Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman learn to make nice in "The Savages." . . . Director Brian De Palma looks at the Iraq war in "Redacted." . . . Special effects help enliven the children's classic "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep." . . . Hilary Swank receives a series of mysterious letters in "P.S. I Love You." . . . Keira Knightley and James McAvoy learn about lies and love in "Atonement." . . . And the high-pitched trio -- Alvin, Simon and Theodore -- return in the song-filled family comedy "Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The monster Grendel's seductive mother, played by Angelina Jolie, is determined to avenge her son's death in in " Beowulf."

REVIEW

BeowulfWho: With Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie. Directed by Robert Zemeckis.Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity.Running time: 114 minutes.When: Opens Friday.Where: Area theaters. It will play in 3-D at Cinemark Valley View and Regal Cobblestone in Elyria. Other area the aters will screen it in regular format.Grade: B.

Robert Zemeckis uses state-of-the art moviemaking technology to create the demons, warriors and dragon that populate the ancient story of "Beowulf." Was it necessary to make "Beowulf" in performance-capture animation? Probably not. Does it work? Yes, in a big way. Zemeckis injects a cinematic feeling into a mythological man vs. monster adventure, punctuated with plenty of disgusting gore and raw violence.

Performance capture is a step between live-action and 2-D animation. Digital sensors are placed on the actors' faces and bodies as they act out their parts. Data from the performances is put into computers and formed into animated characters.

Performance-capture technology has evidently advanced since director Zemeckis' dead-eyed kids invaded "The Polar Express" in 2004. The animated characters in "Beowulf" look and move like the actors they are modeled on. Even skin texture in close-ups looks real, except that hands look like dolls' appendages.

Crispin Glover's performance as the hell beast Grendel proves that motion capture is a step beyond computer-generated images. Grendel isn't just an artist's conception; he's more real, more fully formed, more convincing. And more terrifying.

A 3-D version of "Beowulf" will play in some theaters. If you can tolerate wearing 3-D glasses for two hours, see the movie in that version.

Themes of revenge, loyalty and mother love make the epic Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf" relevant today. Composed by an unknown poet about A.D. 700, it is among the oldest surviving poems in the English language.

The movie's adapted screenplay was written by Neil Gaiman, known for his graphic novels and fantasy books, and Roger Avary.

"Beowulf" takes us to A.D. 500 Denmark. The kingdom of King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) is cursed with a vicious demon, Grendel (Glover). This misshapen, half-skeletal monster attacks King Hrothgar's mead hall and throws men through the air like rag dolls.

Hrothgar is too old to face the beast, so he sends word to the surrounding clans asking for a brave warrior who can defeat Grendel. Beowulf (Ray Winstone) answers the call, and bravely strips naked to face Grendel with his bare hands.

Beowulf learns that Hrothgar has more than Grendel to worry about. There's also Grendel's mother (Angelina Jolie), a seductive changeling at the heart of the kingdom's corrosive secrets.

The cast includes John Malkovich as the cowardly Unferth, Robin Wright Penn as Queen Wealthow, and Brendan Gleeson as Beowulf's friend, Wiglaf.

The renovation of the Hanna Theatre will completely reconfigure the 1921 touring Broadway house, but it will leave historical details, such as this plaster ceiling medallion of a tambourine-playing cherub, intact.

Thanks to a $1.5 million donation from a major Northeast Ohio corporation, it's now official: Downtown Cleveland's storied Hanna Theatre is set to become one of the country's most revolutionary new performance spaces.

The board of Great Lakes Theater Festival on Wednesday unanimously voted to start work on a joint project with Playhouse Square Foundation, which owns the Hanna, to transform the 1921 venue into a 21st-century theater while preserving its historic-site status.

The city's professional producer of classical theater gave the green light on the strength of a "leading gift" from Parker-Hannifin Corp., a Mayfield Heights-based multinational company that manufactures high-tech hydraulic and aerospace components.

Peter Bergman and Michelle Staffodrd of "The Young and the Restless." Soap operas are among the programs most threatened by Hollywood's 10-day-old writers' strike.

The daytime soap operas, the late-night talk shows and the prime-time hit "Samantha Who?" have something in common. They are among the programs most threatened by Hollywood's 10-day-old writers' strike.

And the longer members of the Writers Guild of America stay on the picket line, the greater this threat grows. The 1988 writers' strike lasted 23 weeks. That, say some observers, could be fatal to the daytime soap opera, a programming form that started more than 75 years ago on radio.

"This could be the final nail in the coffin of soap operas," said Robert Thompson, a professor of communications at Syracuse University. "You take those soap operas away and find something like talk shows or game shows to put in their place, and the chances of the soaps coming back are slim. They're too expensive. They've got huge casts. They don't have a rerun season. They're incredibly inefficient, and talk shows tend to perform at least as well."

CBS and ABC remain major players in the soap game, but ratings have been in steady decline since the '80s. Talk shows also are much cheaper to produce.

"If you give the networks any reason to take them away, I have the feeling that this 70-year run for 'Guiding Light' is over," Thompson said. "It's curtains for the whole form."

No one picks up a translation of the ancient Anglo Saxon poem "Beowulf" for a little light reading. But when students are assigned to read it, they discover echoes of "The Sopranos" and themes that influenced "The Lord of the Rings."

The ancient epic poem is still required reading at some colleges and high schools, including Gilmour Academy. English teacher Elizabeth Edmondson assigned the poem to her sophomores in September. A movie version, starring Ray Winstone, Crispin Glover and Angelina Jolie, opens in theaters Friday, Nov. 16.

Edmondson emphasized the parallels between the world of Beowulf and modern day in her classroom. Revenge and loyalty to a clan, as seen in "The Sopranos," are relevant. We know people who are a bit of a braggart and want to leave behind a legacy, like Beowulf does, she says.

"It's the most basic story of good versus evil," Edmondson said. "The action draws them in right away."

"Music is who I am," says R&B singer Cheri Dennis, formerly of Shaker Heights. "Even when I was in high school -- and it's so crazy to say this -- I felt like I had a record deal, long before I had one."

When it comes to her songs, Cheri Dennis doesn't like to play favorites. If pressed, however, the Cleveland-bred, hip-hop-savvy R&B vocalist will admit to having a soft spot for "Spaced Out," a declaration of independence set against a cosmic-funk groove.

"You can do your own thing / Just march to your own beat," she sings.

"It's pretty reflective of who I am," Dennis said.

Her debut album, "In and Out of Love," won't arrive in stores until Tuesday, Feb. 26. But you can download it now exclusively at iTunes.

The online sneak preview "gives me a wider audience," Dennis said by phone last week, somewhere between Pennsylvania and Delaware in the midst of a buzz-building tour.

Born in Los Angeles, Dennis was 3 when her family moved to Cleveland, her father's hometown. She grew up in Shaker Heights.

"I've always been Cheri the singer, as far back as I can remember," said Dennis, 29. "Music is who I am. Even when I was in high school -- and it's so crazy to say this -- I felt like I had a record deal, long before I had one."

In her teens, she was a member of the local group Spoyled. Dennis answered to the stage name Ms. Finesse.

"I was around 16 when the group broke up. When you're dealing with teenage girls, it was hard to keep it together, especially in high school, when boys and other interests came along."

After graduating from Shaker Heights High School, Dennis moved to New York City. There she met Jimmy Cozier, an R&B singer himself who had a hit with "She's All I Got" in 2001. He became her manager.

"Her soulful style is obviously going to keep the urban set in tune," Cozier said. "She has a great pop edge, too.

"She'll definitely appeal to a variety of people, not just one audience."

One of Cozier's friends invited Dennis to a party. Sean "Diddy" Combs happened to be there, too.

"I sat down next to him and sang over the music that was playing," Dennis said. "That's how I got my deal -- right place, right time.

"Actually, getting the deal was fairly easy. Getting to this point was hard."

She joined Diddy's Bad Boy Entertainment roster six years ago.

So what took so long for her album to see the light of day?

"It was supposed to come out last year, but if it had, I don't know if I would've been happy with the songs," Dennis said.

"Aside from normal record-company politics, the album wasn't what it should've been. We needed time to regroup, to reevaluate and to revamp some of the songs."

In the interim, she had a Top 40 single on Billboard's R&B/hip-hop chart in 2006 with "I Love You," which resurfaces on "In and Out of Love." The eclectic album features collaborations with producers Timbaland, Rodney Jerkins and Mario Winans, among others. Rappers Yung Joc and Gorilla Zoe lend a hand on the new single, "Portrait of Love."

Dennis has done side projects with everyone from Diddy to Danity Kane. Among her other credits are the MTV "Making the Band 3" theme song, "Ooh La La."

She also holds the distinction of being the first solo female artist since Faith Evans to get a big push from Bad Boy, which tells you something. But what, exactly?

"It tells you artists like Cheri aren't a dime a dozen," said Harve Pierre, president of Bad Boy and co-executive producer of Dennis' album.

"Her vocals are just incredible. She loves her album. Puff loves her album. I love her album. . . . All the parties are happy now."

Pierre believes "In and Out of Love" has a good shot at gold sales (of 500,000 copies), if not platinum sales (of 1,000,000).

He declined to discuss details of a Bad Boy package tour in the works for 2008, although he said Dennis "definitely" would be part of it.

Now if only he could get her to stop going on and on about Cleveland.

"She's always talking about it," Pierre said.

"I want to thank everyone there who supported my music," Dennis said. "It's so humbling, and I'm so appreciative.

"Cleveland showed me a lot of love, so just shout Cleveland out for me, OK?"

Be careful what you wish for, "Day One" warns. The powerful docudrama, released Tuesday on DVD, charts the wartime race to build the world's first atomic weapons. The successful U.S. effort hastened the end of WWII, but some scientists and soldiers involved in the Manhattan Project soon regretted it.

The 1989 made-for-TV movie won an Emmy for outstanding drama special. What the CBS film lacks in cinematography, it makes up for with a well-paced story and a solid cast. It stars David Strathairn, Brian Dennehy, Tony Shalhoub, Michael Tucker, Hume Cronyn and Hal Holbrook.

More than just re-enacting the dramatic events leading up to the bombing of Japan, the balanced film shows the main players wrestling with the enormous philosophical and political issues the new superweapons raised.

The academic, military and political leaders working together on the U.S. project often clashed.

Brilliant Jewish physicists fleeing Hitler's Europe bring their bomb designs to the Allies, fearing the Nazis have a head start. When Germany finally falls, the race is over for the laboratory boys, with Japan nearly defeated. "Now we won't have to use it," says one.

A U.S. military officer replies, "If we've got a bomb, we're gonna use it."

Starting a nuclear arms race with Russia worries the lead U.S. scientist, Robert Oppenheimer (played by Strathairn, great as usual). Upon witnessing the first nuclear blast, he says, "I am become death, shatterer of worlds," quoting Hindu scripture in the "Bhagavad Gita."

President Truman's response to the news is more pragmatic. "That'll keep the Russians straight," he says.

Based on "Day One Before Hiroshima and After" by Peter Wyden, the 140-minute film presents both sides of the controversial decision to use the bomb on Japan. The DVD includes cast biographies.

Shrek the ThirdMike Myers, Eddie Murphy
DreamWorks

The big green monster shows no sign of losing his silly sense of humor in his third big-screen outing. Yes, this blockbuster animated feature is stuffed with inside jokes and trendy pop-culture references, but it still manages to be laugh-out-loud funny for all ages. It hauled in a hefty $321 million, making it the No. 2 U.S. film so far this year behind "Spider-Man 3." Shrek's all-star cast includes Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas and Julie Andrews. The plentiful DVD extras are mostly dull. Best are three long deleted scenes, acted out on storyboards. PG, 92 minutes.

Amazing GraceIoan Gruffudd
Fox

This artful biopic sings the praises of William Wilberforce, an unwavering foe of the British slave trade in the late 1700s. As a young Parliament member, he risks a bright future when a crisis of conscience compels him to lead the abolitionist movement. For years, he tries to pass a bill outlawing the murderous slave ships that line his colleagues' pockets. Ioan Gruffudd ("Fantastic Four") stretches himself impressively as Wilberforce. Marketed mainly to religious groups, this stirring 2006 film deserves a wider audience. Directed by Michael Apted (The "Up" series). DVD extras: featurettes, commentary. PG, 111 minutes.

La Vie en RoseMarion CotillardHBO Home Video

The life of Edith Piaf was filled with incredible highs and lows. Born into poverty, abandoned at 5 and raised in a brothel, she became an overnight sensation when a nightclub owner discovered her singing on a Paris street at 20. Her remarkable voice brought her fame, but a car crash, morphine addiction and her lover's accidental death kept the "little sparrow" down. Marion Cotillard ("A Good Year") is generating Oscar buzz for her starring role in this 2007 biopic. Her transformation into Piaf is the subject of the sole DVD extra, a 7-minute featurette. PG-13, 141 minutes.

How's your tolerance meter for blood, depravity and death? This holiday season, multiplexes will overflow with dark themes. It starts today with the Coen brothers take on Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men," pulsating with shotgun splatterings courtesy of Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin.

It's an excellent film by the way, but Hollywood, holding up a mirror to our war-torn times, is obsessed of late with the serious, ponderous and depressing.

Between Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas day, Greater Cleveland will be deluged with heavy films, Oscar hopefuls, and a smidgen of sequels. One of them, "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem," bears the telling tagline: "This Christmas there will be no peace on Earth!"

Wednesday, Nov. 21

"Enchanted"Cast: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden. Buzz: This one looks like fun. Animated fairy-tale characters transform and warp into the realm of actual humans in Manhattan, led by a fantastically effervescent Amy Adams.

"I'm Not There"Cast: Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale. Buzz: Bob Dylan fans of the world unite! This bizarre concoction from director Todd Haynes delivers six actors as sort-of Bobs during iconic moments in his life.

"This Christmas"Cast: Delroy Lindo, Idris Elba, Loretta Devine. Buzz: The six Whitfield children are headed home for Christmas with their mom (Loretta Devine), which guarantees a certain level of love, laughter and dysfunction.

"August Rush"Cast: Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell. Buzz: The great Freddie Highmore ("Finding Neverland") stars as an abandoned kid who uses his musical talents to survive on the streets of New York.

"Hitman"Cast: Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko. Buzz: Agent 47 kills people for a living and must dodge Interpol and the Russian military. Based on the video game.

"The Mist"Cast: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden. Buzz: Not all of Stephen King's works have become great films, but the good news for "The Mist" is that director Frank Darabont is behind the camera ("The Green Mile," "The Shawshank Redemption"). This time he tackles King's tale of townspeople battling creepy creatures in the local grocery store. Clean up on aisle five!

Friday, Nov. 30

"Sleuth"Cast: Jude Law, Michael Caine. Buzz: The original film version of Anthony Shaffer's play was a spectacular showdown between Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier. Now, Caine returns in the Olivier role as a mystery novelist who ensnares his wife's lover (Jude Law in Caine's old role) in dangerous schemes. It boasts an impressive pedigree -- multitalented director Kenneth Branagh and a screenplay from Harold Pinter no less. But let's see if it can unseat the 1972 version, which had its own creative lion on board, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, directing his final film.

Friday, Dec. 7

"The Golden Compass"Cast: Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliot, Eva Green, Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig. Buzz: This season's fantasy-adventure epic, from the pages of Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights," charts a 12-year-old girl's rescue mission through an alternative world. Could be a winner. Besides, it features both of the Ians: McKellen and McShane.

Wednesday, Dec 12

"The Perfect Holiday"Cast: Gabrielle Union, Morris Chestnut, Khail Bryant. Buzz: A young girl tries to brighten her divorced mom's holiday season with help from a department store Santa.

Friday, Dec. 14

"I Am Legend"Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok. Buzz: A horrible virus has wiped out millions and left one man alone in New York, scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith). Things get all lonely and freaky as Neville tries to find other survivors.

"Margot at the Wedding"Cast: Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black. Buzz: Depressive realist Noah Baumbach, who scored in 2005 with the quite brilliant "The Squid and the Whale," returns with another raw, honest look at a dysfunctional family, this one led by two sisters, Pauline and Margot (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nicole Kidman).

"The Kite Runner"Cast: Khalid Abdalla, Homayon Ershadi, Zekeria Ebrahimi. Buzz: You might worry about ruining the book and all that, but Khaled's Hosseini's best seller about friendship and fear is safeguarded by the very respectful Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland," "Monster's Ball").

"National Treasure: Book of Secrets"Cast: Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Helen Mirren. Buzz: The gang is back from the fun adventure flick "National Treasure." This time, a missing page from John Wilkes Booth's diary sets off a great global search.

Tuesday, Dec. 25

"The Great Debaters"Cast: Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Jurnee Smollett. Buzz: Denzel hasn't directed a film since "Antwone Fisher," but he couldn't resist this true story of Prof. Melvin Tolson and his underdog debate team that took on Harvard in the 1930s.

"Charlie Wilson's War"Cast: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Buzz: Based on the true story of the playboy Texas congressman who helped Afghan rebels defeat the Soviet Union. This Oscar-coveting drama features an A-list cast and a script by Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing").

"Alien vs. Predator: Requiem"Cast: John Ortiz, Steven Pasquale, Johnny Lewis. Buzz: This time, warring alien and predator forces duke it out in a small town.

"Juno"Cast: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner. Buzz: Mega-praise at the Toronto International Film Festival has propelled "Juno," about a pregnant teen's search for adoptive parents, into a holiday must-see.

Also in December: Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen experience "anesthetic awareness" in the medical thriller "Awake." . . . Bickering siblings Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman learn to make nice in "The Savages." . . . Director Brian De Palma looks at the Iraq war in "Redacted." . . . Special effects help enliven the children's classic "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep." . . . Hilary Swank receives a series of mysterious letters in "P.S. I Love You." . . . Keira Knightley and James McAvoy learn about lies and love in "Atonement." . . . And the high-pitched trio -- Alvin, Simon and Theodore -- return in the song-filled family comedy "Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Nobody expected "High School Musical," the Disney Channel movie first shown in 2006, to become the runaway kid-culture phenomenon it has. We know this because, despite its luck in hitting all the right "Grease"-like buttons and getting a whole new generation interested in show business, it's a poorly made, campy movie.

Fortunately, the Walt Disney empire is many things, but it is not stupid enough to make the same mistake as it continues to exploit its success.

At least that's the case with the new, live national touring production of "High School Musical" playing now through Sunday at the Palace Theatre in downtown Cleveland's Playhouse Square.

That may sound heretical to the faithful who demand the original movie's stars, most notably Vanessa Anne Hudgens as brainiac Gabriella and Zac Efron as jock Troy, the pair who unite their New Mexico school through their romantic theatrical debut.

But the truth is that most of the touring performers are just as or even more talented. And, more important, the theatrical "High School Musical" has been tweaked to better bring out the show's themes without disparaging any particular group.

And director Jeff Calhoun is the genuine item, with Broadway credits including "Grey Gardens," "Brooklyn" and Deaf West Theatre's outstanding "Big River."

In the TV movie, Gabriella and Troy represent their cliques nobly, but the drama-geek group gets no such respect. It's fronted by brother-and-sister ego-team of Ryan and Sharpay and their clueless drama teacher, Ms. Darbus.

In the stage version, the thespians get a squarer deal. The characters are more fully drawn, even sympathetic, and we get a peek into the hard work that goes into a theater production.

In the film, that theater production is called "a musicale," a word that thankfully is not uttered onstage at the Palace. Instead, it's called "Juliet and Romeo," which serves to underscore "HSM's" inspiration as well as to put girls first.

Director Calhoun and choreographer Lisa Stevens shine brightest in the most difficult scene, in which a bevy of basketball players bounce dozens of balls on the stage in syncopation to one of the show's most vibrant numbers, "Get'cha Head in the Game."

The cast is a real ensemble. John Jeffrey Martin is more believably a jock than pretty-boy Efron, and Arielle Jacobs has more of the innocently sultry stuff that folks seem to admire in Hudgens.

Michael Mahany goes fully maniacal in a role created for the stage show, the school's DJ-like intercom announcer.

It's still a silly little blockbuster that elicits squeals from its devout followers. But onstage, "High School Musical" proves it's also got bona fide theatrical chops.

"American Gangster," Jay-Z's 10th studio effort, was inspired by the new Ridley Scott film of the same name, starring Denzel Washington as 1970s New York City drug kingpin Frank Lucas. The key word here is "inspired." When Jay-Z signaled the end of his short-lived retirement with an uneven comeback album, last year's "Kingdom Come," inspiration was lacking. Instead of rapping about the hard-knock life, the hip-hop mogul regaled us with half-hearted tales of the good life.

It's a dilemma faced by any MC who hits the big time: How do you "keep it real" when the reality is you're sitting pretty on Forbes' list of the top-earning celebrities?

"American Gangster" affords multimillionaire Jay-Z, a former drug trafficker himself, a golden opportunity to revisit his street-smart roots, without sounding hypocritical. He makes the most of it.

To be clear: This isn't the movie's official soundtrack, which includes oldies by Bobby Womack, the Staple Singers and Sam & Dave.

Soundbites from the film season Jay-Z's "American Gangster," alongside real-life cameos by his girlfriend, Beyonce, as well as Lil Wayne, Beanie Sigel and Nas.

Tasteful snippets from various retro-flavored records are worked into the mix, too. Marvin Gaye's "Soon I'll Be Loving You Again" wafts in and out of "American Dreamin'," while the rattlesnake percussion of "Sweet," which samples Rudy Love's "Does Your Mama Know," evokes the classic blaxploitation soundtracks of yesteryear.

When he isn't retelling Lucas' story or deftly connecting the dots with his own experiences, Jay-Z also comments on current affairs, including (on "Ignorant [Expletive]") the aftermath of the Don Imus controversy.

The cool-grooving "Party Life" finds Jay-Z ready for his close-up among a couple of cinematic bad guys as he boasts in a rat-a-tat staccato:

Sippin' on my vino

Got me cooler than Pacino

And De Niro put together

Maybe it's just the wine talking, but at least it hasn't extinguished the fire in this American gangster's belly. Grade: A-

T.H.U.G.S.Bone Thugs-N-HarmonyRuthless

Hot on the heels of the homegrown rap group's star-studded comeback album, "Strength & Loyalty," comes this hodgepodge of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony odds and ends, opportunistically slapped together by the group's old record company. Alas, "Sweet Jane" isn't a Velvet Underground cover, but yet another ode to marijuana. A handful of other tracks merit a listen, although most of these leftovers previously haven't seen the light of day for good reason. In stores Tuesday. Grade: B-

I-EmpireAngels & AirwavesSuretone/Geffen

On derivative tunes such as "Call to Arms," "Heaven" and the particularly egregious "Star of Bethlehem" (or should I say "Where the Streets Have No Name?"), ex-blink 182 singer-guitarist Tom DeLonge's new group easily could be mistaken for a U2 tribute band. There might be cause for rejoicing if this were 1987, if Bono & Co. never had made "The Joshua Tree" and if DeLonge & Co. had something fresh to offer. But it's not, U2 did and Angels & Airwaves most certainly do not. Grade: C+

A Place to LandLittle Big TownEquity Music Group

The "Landslide"-ish ballad "To Know Love" isn't going to help matters if this country quartet is looking to dodge more of the Fleetwood Mac comparisons that greeted Little Big Town's previous efforts, although "A Place to Land" proves these four-part harmonizers have more to offer than "Rumours" rewrites. For starters, check out "I'm With the Band," the gripping "Evangeline" and the hand-clapping "Novocaine," a boisterous stab at roadhouse rock 'n' roll. Grade: B

PLAYLIST

Five songs you should check out this week:

Cheri Dennis, "Remind You": It'll whet your appetite for the Cleveland-bred R&B singer's debut album, "In and Out of Love," available Tuesday on iTunes and Tuesday, Feb. 26, in stores.

Avril Lavigne, "Hot": Another stick of bubblegum pop with punk flavor crystals, courtesy of the attitudinal Canadian sensation.

Symon was typically low-key throughout the evening causing doubts for those gathered to celebrate at Lolita in Tremont, the original space of Symon's first restaurant.

Symon's wife Liz said "It had more impact this time than actually being there. I shed a tear this time, all our friends were here that was so much bigger. A win on Cleveland soil is so huge."

The secret ingredient in the final cook-off was swordfish, not a Symon specialty, and the show's twist was that three current Iron Chefs -- Masaharu Morimoto, Cat Cora and Bobby Flay -- were brought in as judges. The new judges saved Symon's victory as all three voted for him while only one of the other three judges, Cleveland author Michael Ruhlman, voted for Symon.

"I'm flattered that the Iron Chefs voted for me because they actually know how difficult it is to perform in these circumstances, where not all the other judges have that experience," said Symon. "They know food as well as anyone on the planet."

Symon seemed calm and composed throughout the hour in which he was required to create four different swordfish dishes. He completed his tasks, even adding a fifth dish, with time to spare. He was aided by his Lola restaurant chef de cuisine Derek Clayton and pastry chef Cory Barrett.

The show was taped in September, Symon said, and reliving the competition on Sunday night made him nervous. He braised, fried, roasted, grilled and poached the swordfish. Some was pureed and used as a filling. He also gave the judges a cocktail of champagne, sake, and Yuzu, a Japanese fruit juice.

"Fish is not something I do a lot of. I'm a meat guy. Still, we did what we had to do. I felt good the whole time. We ran pretty smooth."

Besh may have run into trouble by attempting to impress the Iron Chefs with a seventh dish, a swordfish dessert -- after Morimoto jokingly requested one. None of the Iron Chefs were impressed with it and two said it was not something they would have done.

Symon said the 18-day shoot was grueling. It also was challenging keeping his secret for two months. Staff members gave him the nickname "Secret Squirrel."

"It was hard at first, but then I thought about the million-dollar contract I signed to keep quiet," he said. "Then it wasn't so hard."

Any discussion of Christina Applegate's hit series runs the risk of turning into an Abbott and Costello routine. That's the danger of dealing with who, what and where. Who's on first? Well, Applegate and her breakout comedy certainly are sitting pretty in first place among all new shows.

What's the name of this highest-rated rookie series? "Samantha Who?", that's what. And Applegate's series not only is television's No. 1 newcomer, it is running ahead of "Two and a Half Men" as the medium's most-watched half-hour comedy.

Where is it? OK, this has been a key factor in the early success of "Samantha Who?" The fledgling comedy airs at 9:30 p.m. Mondays on ABC, inheriting the vast lead-in audience of last season's second highest-rated show, "Dancing With the Stars."

No. 1 rookie series
But that in no way tarnishes the stellar numbers "Samantha Who?" is posting. Plenty of new shows have failed to hold big lead-in audiences of established hits. Losing a massive chunk of the "CSI" audience quickly sealed the doom of CBS rookie "Viva Laughlin." And it's unlikely ABC will long stay patient with Thursday newcomer "Big Shots," which is losing 57 percent of the lead-in audience provided by "Grey's Anatomy."

It's also worth pointing out that, after four episodes, "Samantha Who?" is a top 10 show against formidable competition. It airs opposite CBS' "Rules of Engagement" -- which comes after "Two and a Half Men" and hits cleanup in TV's top-ranked comedy lineup -- and NBC's "Heroes," last season's highest-rated new series.

Applegate credits her family
Applegate, best known to prime-time viewers for her 10-season run as the vacant Kelly Bundy on "Married . . . With Children" (Fox, 1987-97), has the title role on "Samantha Who?" In the pilot episode, which aired Oct. 15, Samantha Newly landed in a hospital bed after a hit-and-run accident. She emerged from an eight-day coma with retrograde amnesia.

Samantha had all the tools to function in society, but her personal memories were gone. She soon discovered that Samantha Newly was not a very well-liked person. In fact, she was pretty awful: self-centered, selfish, petty, quick-tempered, vain, abusive.

She embraced the chance to start over as a new person, beginning this journey with Frank (Tim Russ), the doorman at her apartment. To the old Sam, he was just someone to hold the door for her. To the new Sam, he became part confidant, part conscience.

"She will recover memories," said Donald Todd, the co-creator and executive producer of "Samantha Who?" "We will have flashbacks in the show and opportunities for her to recover a little memory at a time, but given that we could go millions and millions of episodes, there will never be a large block where she will say, 'Oh, I'm back now.' Maybe in the finale we could do that."

Applegate, 35, made her TV debut on an episode of "Days of Our Lives." She was in the arms of her mother, singer-actress Nancy Lee Priddy. She was 3 months old.

At 5 months, she made her first commercial (for Playtex). At 9, she made her film debut.

Unlike so many other child stars, she made the transition through the teen years without significant personal or professional trauma. She credits her parents.

"I have a very grounded family unit, and, because of that, I'm still here," said Applegate, who won an Emmy in 2003 for guest starring as Rachel's sister, Amy, on "Friends." "Because of that, I'm still working and functioning. I've had ebbs and flows, like everybody else, but I was lucky that I had a family that allowed me to live that out and not just be this machine."

Applegate also avoided being typecast as a Kelly Bundylike dimwit.

"When I would leave the set, she stayed there and I left," Applegate said of her "Married . . . With Children" character. "It didn't follow me anywhere in my personal life. I have such respect for that experience, but you have leave your characters behind and move forward."

From the "Friends" set, she moved into the hit 2004 comedy "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." In 2005, her star turn in the Broadway revival of "Sweet Charity" yielded a Tony nomination.

"Everything you do prepares you for the next thing that you embark upon," Applegate said. "So spending a year on Broadway made me more confident."

Also starring Jean Smart and Kevin Dunn as Sam's parents, "Samantha Who?" has been compared with "My Name is Earl," another quirky network comedy about a character reinventing himself and making up for past wrongs.

"There's an element of this show that can draw on that same kind of setup," Todd said. "But it's only one element of the show. . . . I think 'Earl' is great. It's a terrific show. Some people call this 'My Name is Girl,' and I hate those people. But there are many avenues for stories on this."

Strike clouds show's future
There's also an uncertain future. But it's not the competition that threatens to cool down the red-hot "Samantha Who?" It's the prospect of a long writers' strike, which will be particularly devastating on new shows that viewers are discovering.

Still, like its lead character, "Samantha Who?" already has coped with an uncertain future. The series went through a long title battle before claiming the title of No. 1 new show. It was first announced as "Sam I Am," and even that wasn't the first title submitted.

"The one we originally wanted was 'Samantha Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,' " Todd said, joking about the title war. "For a while, it was 'Samantha Be Good.' That was like a day. But we really liked 'Samantha Who?' at least as much as 'Sam I Am' because it reflected the journey of the character. The character, no matter how long we go in the series, will be finding out who she is."

The writers' strike raises the very question of, "How long?" It adds the unwelcome element of how to the show's winning game of who, what and where.

Did someone hide the matches? No pianos were torched by Jerry Lee Lewis or any of the distinguished admirers who gathered to honor the pyromaniacal Rock and Roll Hall of Famer during an uneven yet ultimately entertaining concert Saturday night at Playhouse Square's State Theatre in Cleveland. Still, there were some fiery highlights.

Lewis, 72, had a front-row seat.

It fell to Billy Lee Riley to get the ball rolling with a lukewarm "Great Balls of Fire."

Cowboy Jack Clement, who recorded Lewis' quintessential rock 'n' roll hits for Sun Records, turned in a fun "It'll Be Me." The song, which Clement wrote, was the B-side of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On," a Top 5 smash for Lewis 50 years ago.

George Thorogood was brought out to do "Rockin' My Life Away," but ended up launching into "High Heel Sneakers" instead, as members of the house band exchanged confused looks. It was a whole lotta shaky.

Other vintage Lewis tunes were in capable hands with old-timers Wanda Jackson ("Breathless") and Narvel Felts ("High School Confidential"), although the show could've used more young punks to keep it from occasionally feeling like a PBS pledge-drive special.

Amiable emcee Kris Kristofferson called Lewis "a force of nature," but the best some performers could muster was a slight atmospheric disturbance.

The concert was the climax of a weeklong salute to Jerry Lee Lewis, presented by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Case Western Reserve University. Still going strong after 12 years, the American Music Masters series previously feted Woody Guthrie, Sam Cooke and Roy Orbison, among others. Lewis was the first living honoree.

Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and Chrissie Hynde were in the house, too. Surely this was the first time -- and most likely, the last time -- they shared a bill.

Swaggart, who is Lewis' cousin, sang a gospel song, natch.

"To say I love my cousin would be an understatement," Swaggart said. "He has one of the biggest hearts I know."

At the end of the evening, Lewis shuffled onstage to accept his American Music Masters award. He was not expected to perform, but in lieu of a speech, he sat down behind the piano for a soulful "Over the Rainbow."

No, he didn't set the instrument ablaze, although it warmed your heart just the same to bask in the presence of this master at work.

No living American director has a more extensive resume than Sidney Lumet. Not Spielberg, not Scorsese, not Coppola.

Lumet's masterful body of work started in 1957 with "12 Angry Men," the jury room drama as vital and relevant as the day it was released. Now, 50 years later, Lumet is still creating interesting, edgy films. His latest, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," a heist-gone-very-wrong saga starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke, lands in Cleveland Friday, Nov. 16. It is his 44th film.

Before turning to movies, Lumet was a stage actor in New York and then directed many of the classic live dramas in television's "golden age" of the 1950s. He deftly transferred Eugene O'Neill to the small screen in "The Iceman Cometh" and to the big screen in "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

In one 12-year span, 1964-1976, Lumet directed 18 films, including "Fail-Safe," "The Pawnbroker," "The Group," "The Anderson Tapes," "Serpico," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Network."

Phew.

He has drawn career-high performances from Hollywood heavyweights such as Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Katharine Hepburn, Faye Dunaway, and Henry Fonda. But because he does not let his style overwhelm his stories and because he has dabbled in so many genres -- musicals ("The Wiz"), dark character studies ("The Verdict") and politically charged dramas ("Running on Empty") -- Lumet doesn't often get the accolade parade of his contemporaries.

The geniuses who vote for the Academy Awards have neglected Lumet repeatedly for best director, though he has been nominated four times, for "Network," "The Verdict," "12 Angry Men," and "Dog Day Afternoon." He's in good company. The Academy snubbed Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles, too, though it finally gave Lumet a lifetime-achievement award in 2005.

His films have been nominated for more than 50 Oscars, but at 83, he's much more interested in the now than the then.

"I don't look at my old work. When it's done it's done," Lumet said on the phone from his New York office. "It's very nice when your movie has a kind of resonance, when it stays with a person enough so that they start relating it to other things you've done. But I don't watch them."

Adamant about rehearsals
"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is a dark, twisty look at two desperate brothers, Andy and Hank (Hoffman and Hawke), who try to rob a jewelry store to drag themselves out of debt. The catch is, the store is owned by their parents (Rosemary Harris and Albert Finney), and the robbery goes terribly astray. Among those caught in the crossfire of deceit is Andy's wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei).

The intense film is told through a time-fracture technique, revisiting key moments through different characters' eyes. He's not much of an on-set diva, but the one thing Lumet insists on for every film is rehearsal time. The more the better. He had about three weeks for "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"

"Rehearsal was critical on this," he said. "Like all melodrama, the story is very improbable, and in order to tell it, I felt I needed a very high level of intensity. I could not have achieved that intensity without the rehearsal period building for the actors."

It not only shapes the characters, but also shapes the way they are shot. In one scene, Hoffman, playing an embezzling broker, is at a conference table on the verge of having his financial secrets exposed. The camera starts behind him. Then it's on top of him, and then it quickly pulls away. It makes him look alone and guilty.

It grew out of what Lumet witnessed Hoffman doing in rehearsal.

"I try as hard as I can for the camera to corroborate what the actor is doing," said Lumet. "It's just as he is trying to hide, because the last thing he wants out is the truth. Essentially, the camera is doing exactly what he is -- hiding his face for as long as possible. Then finally revealing it."

Taking the tension out of a scene
Hoffman and Hawke are both superb. Tomei, in one of her best roles in years, spends much of the film naked. The first scene is a very graphic moment in bed between her and Hoffman.

How do you reach that level of actor-director trust?

"First of all, she had to be totally unselfconscious about it. If, during rehearsal, she or any actor, gets the feeling you're exploiting the situation or using it beyond its dramatic purpose, they're going to tense up. Marisa saw very quickly that there was no sexploitation in it, that it is about the drama, and a very important scene.

"I'll tell you a lovely thing. I'm sure Philip is not used to having a bare [behind] in movies. He's not your average sex symbol, and when I'm rehearsing I stage it as well. Because it's the first thing in the picture, it's the first thing I started to stage. We had been around the table about three or four days, so things are very relaxed, and Marisa, bless her, hopped up onto the bed, got onto her knees and elbows, slapped her [rear end] and said, 'C'mon, Phil, let's do it!' "

"What was marvelous about that, and so generous, was that she took the tension out of the moment for him. And I'm eternally grateful to her."

Lumet won't play the name-your-favorite-film game. Not even from his amazing string of classics.

"I'm not going to tell you that. If I tell you about the ones I feel good about, it makes orphans of the other ones."

Does he at least know if he has hit a home run when a film wraps?

"You know whether you've achieved what you set out to do," he said. "But I have no idea about whether it can be successful or whether it will get good reviews. No idea whatsoever."

Finalist Chef Michael Symon competes in Kitchen Stadium at the Food Network in the final face-off for the title of "Iron Chef."

Editor's note: Writer Douglas Trattner was there for the taping of the final showdown of "The Next Iron Chef." Agreeing not to reveal too much about the show, or the results, he described some of the battle and the work leading up to it.

New York -- Fittingly, it all comes down to a one-on-one in Kitchen Stadium. The Next Iron Chef will be chosen not for his ability to start a charcoal fire or prepare an in-flight meal for high rollers. No, he will have to battle for the title the old-fashioned way: One secret ingredient, 60 minutes on the clock, and a panel of discriminating judges.

That's not to say there won't be a few twists along the way.

While the Indians were struggling to win a pennant, another Cleveland competitor was breezing straight for a different kind of World Series. Michael Symon, our hometown celebrity chef, is just one win away from securing a national championship. By 10 p.m. Sunday, Cleveland could very well be home to an Iron Chef, an exclusive group that currently numbers four.

Sunday's "Next Iron Chef" finale, which airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on the Food Network, caps a grueling six-week competition that pitted chef against chef in a series of unique culinary challenges. One by one, the starting roster of eight chefs has been whittled down to two finalists: Symon, of Lola and Lolita restaurants, and John Besh, owner of Restaurant August and Besh Steak in New Orleans.

According to Bruce Seidel, a Food Network vice president, the original eight contestants "were compiled from a short list of amazing chefs who had left an impression upon us via their 'Iron Chef America' battles, previous competition shows or who had been making noise in the industry."

Guided by Alton Brown and judged at every step by Andrew Knowlton, restaurant editor of Bon Appetit; Donatella Arpaia, owner of New York City's Davidburke & Donatella; and Michael Ruhlman, Cleveland-based James Beard Award-winning food writer, the chefs cooked their way from New York to Munich to Paris and, finally, back to New York.

"I had absolutely no idea where we were going or what we would be doing," says Symon about the competition. "They just said bring yourself and your passport."

Tough as Rust Belt steel, yet tempered by his Midwestern charm, Symon was an early favorite of viewers, bloggers and industry insiders. While we were all rooting for the home team to (finally) do us proud, the rest of the nation was falling in love.

"Michael has a likable presence on the show," explains Ruhlman. "He was the only one who did not actively sabotage any of the other chefs. Michael was just being himself."

Things did not start well for Symon; judge Ruhlman, Symon's so-called Cleveland connection, blasted him for ripping off a recipe from his pastry chef, something only a Lola diner would have known. He was inches from getting the boot, says Ruhlman.

But from then on, Symon became the MVP of the series, winning competitions and wowing judges. "Out of the ballpark," praised Alton Brown after Symon dished up a particularly impressive spread prepared, amazingly enough, over a charcoal fire.

With memorable one-liners like, "Come on, clam!" and "I spent my whole career trying to get chemicals out of my food -- now I gotta put them back in!" Symon provided levity in an otherwise fateful environment.

"All my years in competitive sports taught me how to handle pressure and use it to my advantage," notes Symon. "And that's what it takes to be an Iron Chef."

It also takes one more win. Against Besh. In Kitchen Stadium.

"Someone's career is about to change forever," announces Alton Brown at the outset of this, the final contest, taped in New York at the start of September.

It's obvious that this is no run-of-the-mill Iron Chef battle. Both Brown and host Kevin Brauch are sporting formal attire. A panel of special judges has been brought in to augment the regular trio. The food in the pantry appears more abundant than usual. There even seems to be an extra whoosh or two of fake smoke swirling about the studio.

Symon and Besh could not make for better foils. Besh, with his flowing locks and impeccable chef's whites, is every inch the Southern dandy. Symon, dressed in his jet-black Lolita shirt and sporting his trademark clean-shaven head, is, well, one of us. Assisting him in Kitchen Stadium are Lola chefs Cory Barrett and Derek Clayton.

Symon, as you might recall, has been here before. As a challenger on "Iron Chef America," he got smoked by Morimoto. But it feels different this time around. Symon appears more confident. He's more relaxed. Less sweaty.

Working with the secret ingredient, he speeds to prepare an inspired multicourse meal for the judges. In this room, time waits for no cook. In a surprise move, one that flabbergasts Alton Brown, Symon reaches for the immersion circulator, a high-tech gizmo that only weeks before nearly sent him running back to Lola. The decision could quite possibly make or break his chances of success.

Being from Cleveland, we have come to expect defeat. Still, we are a foolish, hopeful lot that puts stock in sayings like, Wait 'til next year. Well, you know what? We're sick and tired of waiting until next year. We want to win. Now.

Either way, we get to keep Symon.

"Regardless of what happens," he says, "Cleveland will always be my hometown and my home base."

"High School Musical" is a campy, low-budget Disney Channel TV-movie about kids puttin' on a show that caught the imaginations of tweens, teens and beauty queens and has become a mega-marketing phenomenon. And -- sorry, parents -- it shows no signs of fading.

After the original movie's 2006 debut, kiddies have been treated to a sequel that broke cable TV viewing records. Look for a threequel in '08.

Disney also has aired singalongs and dance-alongs, a "pop-up" edition, an "Around the World" iteration, and "Remix," "Once Again" and "Ultimate" editions.

"HSM" also has crossed over into print (a book and a magazine) and onto the stage.

Most of the original cast toured an "HSM" concert to arenas around the country (including Cleveland). A ton of high school drama departments and youth theaters put on live theatrical versions. There's even a Disney on Ice "HSM."

And now "High School Musical" is coming full circle.

Disney has launched a professional theatrical tour of "High School Musical," and starting tonight it will play 13 performances at the Palace Theatre in Playhouse Square.

Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise spend much of their time talking to one another across a desk in the new film, "Lions for Lambs."

REVIEW Lions for LambsWho: With Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise. Directed by Robert Redford.Rated: R for some war violence and language.Running time: 90 minutes.When: Opens Friday.Where: Area theaters.Grade: D-

"Lions for Lambs" has everything going for it -- star power, relevance, a conscience -- and nothing to recommend it. This is one of the most tiresome, poorly written, badly acted, ineptly shot, preachy-teachy-talky films to come along in years. It has a lot to say about taking action in our post-9/11 world gone mad and says it in the most uninteresting way.

Robert Redford directed and stars in this snore-bore with Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise.

They provide a running commentary on America's foibles in Iraq, our inability to find Osama bin Laden, our failed forays into Afghanistan, and the looming threat of Iran. And they still find time to weigh in on our strained military, celebrity-obsessed media, dicey foreign policy, clueless leaders and apathetic voters.

But "Lions for Lambs" it is not a lefty-vs.-righty liberal diatribe. The film points fingers of blame all over, including at irrelevant college professors and an enabling media that promoted the war endlessly on 24-hour news channels while rarely questioning its true motives or consequences.

The film is told in three pieces: Journalist Streep interviews Sen. Cruise in Washington; Professor Redford challenges a laid-back student (Andrew Garfield); and Derek Luke and Michael Pena play recent Army enlistees on a mission to Afghanistan.

Streep and Cruise primarily sit across a desk from each other discussing weighty issues.

Because few things are less interesting on film than two stagnant figures pontificating, we then dash across the country to the generically dubbed "A California University," where two people are . . . sitting across a desk. This time it's Redford and Garfield. The dialogue is at a corporate-training-video level, the performances painfully stilted.

Redford the director should have fired Redford the actor. He adds nothing to the character.

"Lions for Lambs" rarely strikes an emotional chord. It is so predictable in its earnest intentions that it plays like a civics lesson for sixth-graders. It comes from the mind of screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan, who this fall already has given us another overwrought message movie, "The Kingdom." (My only response is to grab a megaphone and screech, "Matthew, step away from the laptop!")

Of course, Redford, with his sterling resume, knows better than most filmmakers what makes great, compelling cinema. He obviously didn't care.

Redford wanted to make a statement about media, politics, education and America's youth in a very noncommercial film. In that sense he succeeded.

Jack Bauer, the resourceful government agent played by Kiefer Sutherland on Fox's "24," has defeated terrorists, traitors, assassins, kidnappers, drug lords and ABC's "Supernanny." But he can't get past a bunch of writers on a picket line.

Fox announced that the strike called Monday by the Writers Guild of America would postpone the seventh season of "24," which was supposed to begin in January. The network's reasoning is that there's no reason to start something it can't finish.

The whole strategy of launching new seasons of "24" in January is based on airing all the episodes, through May, without significant breaks. Some seventh-season episodes of "24" have been completed, but if the writers' strike lasts for months, Fox and the viewers would be left hanging with the story just getting started.

So here's one of the first casualties of the writer's strike, and one of several midseason changes Fox announced in response to it.

Replacing "24" in the 9-10 p.m. Monday time slot will be "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," the series spin-off featuring the character from the "Terminator" movies.

Starring Lena Headey as Sarah, the futuristic action drama will get a special premiere at 8 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 13, on WJW Channel 8. A second episode will air in the show's usual time slot at 9 p.m. Monday, Jan. 14. "Prison Break," which airs its last original episode of the year Monday night, will return at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 14.

Reality programs and game shows, unlike scripted dramas and comedies, have not been shut down by the strike. So last season's highest-rated program, "American Idol," will launch its seventh season with a two-night, four-hour premiere at 8 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, Jan. 15 and 16.

Already reality-heavy, Fox will introduce a new game show, "The Moment of Truth," at 9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 23. Previously announced as "Nothing But the Truth," this series will hook contestants up to a lie detector machine, seeing whether they're willing to tell the truth to win cash prizes.

Because of disruptions caused by postseason baseball, Fox has delayed the start of several new series. Along with its reliance on reality shows, this puts the network in a stronger short-term strike position than its broadcast rivals. Another fantasy drama first announced for a fall start, "New Amsterdam," will premiere at 9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22. It stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as a New York homicide detective who will remain immortal until he meets his true love.

Other new shows coming off the bench for Fox will include: "Unhitched," the Farrelly brothers' comedy about four single guys who want to be married (premiering 9:30 p.m. Sunday, March 3); "When Women Rule the World," a reality series about strong women given the chance to rule men accustomed to calling the shots (8 p.m. Monday, March 3); "The Return of Jezebel James," a comedy starring Parker Posey as a successful book editor reconnecting with her free-spirited sister (8:30 p.m. Friday, March 7); and "Canterbury's Law," a drama starring Julianna Margulies as a defense lawyer (9 p.m. Friday, April 11).

Mixing original episodes and repeats, Fox will move "Bones" to 8 p.m. Friday on Jan. 4, switching to "'Til Death" at 8 p.m. Friday on March 7. "Back to You," the rookie comedy starring Kelsey Grammer and Bay Village native Patricia Heaton, will air at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday starting March 12.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Kenny Chesney won entertainer of the year and Carrie Underwood took home female vocalist and single of the year honors at the Country Music Association Awards on Wednesday.

"God has blessed me with so many wonderful things," said Underwood, who gained fame by winning "American Idol." "If you told me a few years ago I had been nominated with the people I'm nominated with, I would have called you absolutely insane."

Brad Paisley, who won male vocalist, teared up as he thanked his father, who he said carried amplifiers and ran sound "even though he didn't know what he was doing."

"I can't tell you what this means to me to win this. I always wanted to win this award at least once -- this will do," said Paisley, who also won music video for his hit "Online."

Earlier, Sugarland won vocal duo of the year, breaking Brooks & Dunn's long-standing lock on the award, and 17-year-old Taylor Swift won the horizon award for newcomer.

Rascal Flatts won top vocal group, and George Strait took top album for "It Just Comes Natural."

"If we're standing up here, we have this lofty view because we're standing on the shoulders of giants who've come before us," said Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles.

Back in "the day," Dick Nixon was in the White House and a sweet, black-haired girl named Melanie was creating music no one had ever heard before. She was pretty and wrote and sang sensitive songs about love, alienation and sometimes about sex -- at least implied sex.

She was every guy's fantasy.

Now, almost 40 years later, she's still singing. Melanie opens the 10-day Kent State Folk Festival Thursday on a double bill with Steve Forbert at the Kent Stage.

The 41st festival runs through Saturday, Nov. 17, including concerts by Dave Bromberg, Dr. John, Dan Hicks, Tim O'Brien and the Friday, Nov. 16, musical free-for-all at bars and restaurants all over Kent.

With 40 albums to her credit and hits including "Brand New Key," "Lay Down (Candles In the Rain)" and "Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma," Melanie is a natural to kick off the festival.

"It's a lot of fun to do the old stuff, but I love new things too," she said in a recent interview from her home in Nashville. "I know better than to do all new songs; it'll be a mix, depending on the vibe I get from the audience."

Young Reuven Malter (Jeremy Rishe, center) disputes Reb Saunders' (Kenneth Albers, right) gematriya as Danny Saunders (Andrew Pastides, left) looks on in The Cleveland Play House production of "The Chosen."

THEATER

PREVIEW The ChosenWhat: The Cleveland Play House presents the play by Aaron Posner, based on the novel by Chaim Potok, directed by Seth Gordon.When: Opens at 8 p.m. Wednesday. Runs through Sunday, Nov. 25. For performance times, go to the Cleveland Play House Web site.Where: Drury Theatre at the Play House, 8500 Euclid Ave.Tickets: $10-$62. 216-795-7000.

"The Chosen" is, on the one hand, as Jewish as a novel could be. Set in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, it focuses on the conflicted relationship between a pair of 15-year-old Jews, one the son of a rebbe of a Hasidic dynasty, and the other the son of a modern Orthodox Talmudic scholar.

Despite the religious specifics (about which more later) and the New York setting, Chaim Potok's 1967 novel is still on school reading lists across the country and is read in translation around the world for its universal themes.

That's what attracted the attention of director and playwright Aaron Posner, whose 1999 adaptation of "The Chosen" opens tonight at the Cleveland Play House after playing a series of final tuneup preview performances over the past five days.

"I don't know of that many men who don't have a complex relationship with their fathers," said Posner (the first syllable rhymes with "rose"). "And how many stories do you get to do that are about boys who disobey their fathers by going to the library to read books?

"Ultimately this book is about why do we live? What is worthwhile? I've been doing this work professionally 20 years, and no story I've worked to bring to the stage is more important. It's about people recognizing each other's souls. It's about finding your place in the universe."

Many moons ago a publisher in Melbourne rejected Anne Geddes' portfolio. "You can't just photograph babies," he said flatly. As Geddes, 51, recalled, she laughed as she left his office.

"He became known as 'the man who turned down Anne Geddes,' " she said, smiling a bit. And she became a world-renowned photographer, her whimsical baby photos plastered on greeting cards, posters, mugs, calendars, tote bags, bed linens, stationery and puzzles. Think of babies in flower pots, babies as water lilies, babies as bears, all of the babies splendidly chubby.

The sophisticated blond, dressed in black head to toe, visited Cleveland recently to talk about her latest book, "A Labor of Love" ($50, Andrews McMeel Publishing).

It's autobiographical, she said, so people can get to know the person behind the camera. She wisely dismissed the idea of using a ghostwriter. "My friends say, 'It sounds just like you're speaking' " Geddes said.

She spilled her history into the coffee table-sized book, and gussied it up with pages of her iconic photographs and descriptions of the intense preparation needed to produce them. Although her photographs are confections, memories of her childhood on the family's 26,000-acre cattle farm in North Queensland, Australia, are not. She writes of an emotionally remote mother and a father who regularly demeaned his children. Geddes grew up with no sense of self-worth.

"Long Time Coming" is more like it. This double album is the first studio effort since 1979 from Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Glenn Frey, Don Henley, former Northeast Ohio scenester Joe Walsh and that other guy (you know, the one with the long hair).

Listening to "How Long," the toe-tapping, "Already Gone"-ish first single, it's as if the intervening 28 years never transpired. Either these desperadoes were in a state of suspended animation, or they weren't desperately seeking an updated sound.

There are no radical departures, unless you count Henley's falsetto on "Fast Company," a funky, vaguely Prince-like aberration.

Then again, why mess with success? Instead of reinvention, we get a mostly satisfying reiteration of the winning recipe for twangy rock 'n' roll that made "Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" the best-selling album in the history of the universe and paved the way for much of what passes for country music today.

In the process, the Eagles revert to familiar roles. Henley waxes sociopolitically metaphorical on the title track, a long-winded (and not entirely successful) attempt to create another "Hotel California." Frey comes to the rescue with the romantic "No More Cloudy Days" and "I Dreamed There Was No War," an evocative instrumental. Walsh keeps it light on "Last Good Time in Town." And that other guy (you know, the one with the long hair) is always good for a ballad along the lines of the achy-breaky "I Don't Want to Hear Any More."

Their signature harmonies shine especially bright on "No More Walks in the Woods" (shades of the Beatles oldie "Because," with an environmentally conscious twist) and the mariachi-flavored "It's Your World Now," perfect for riding off into a tequila sunset.

"Long Road Out of Eden" can be purchased at www.eaglesband.com. Lest these populist jukebox heroes stand accused of going completely Radiohead on us, the album is being sold at Wal-Mart stores, too. Because let's face it: The Internet is all well and good, but chances are Eagles fans won't find any great additional deals there on leftover Halloween candy, right? Grade: A-

Jane Austen was the quiet observer of life and love in 18th-century England, but she's 21st-century hot. She even has an action figure. Jane is all over the place. This year's "The Jane Austen Book Club" and "Becoming Jane" enchanted romantics longing for a sweet film fix. Type the keywords "Jane Austen" on YouTube, and you get videos of dashing heroes such as Matthew Macfadyen, who won Keira Knightley in 2005's "Pride & Prejudice," set to now sounds such as Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack." And "Masterpiece Theatre" will present film adaptations of Austen's six novels beginning in January.

What is it about Jane?

The daughter of a clergyman who never married, Jane has touched the hearts and minds of generations of readers with true love -- all her novels have deliciously happy endings -- and wit as pointed as a quill pen's tip.

Even nonliterary types whose view of Jane is tainted by bad memories of high school English class have been won over theatrically.

1995's "Clueless" was "Emma," "handsome, clever and rich . . . with very little to distress or vex her," transported to Beverly Hills High. Gwyneth Paltrow was "Emma" in 1996. Knightley's rich "Pride and Prejudice" was a multi-Oscar nominee. Emma Thompson, who wrote the script and starred in 1995's "Sense and Sensibility" with Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant, won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay.

NEW YORK -- Noisy pickets appeared outside the "Today" show set on Monday as a strike by film and television writers got under way. Writers' demands for a bigger slice of DVD profits and revenue from the distribution of films and TV shows over the Internet has been a key issue.

The strike is the first walkout by writers since 1988. That work stoppage lasted 22 weeks and cost the industry more than $500 million. A giant inflated rat was displayed Monday morning near the NBC studios as about 40 people in Rockefeller Center shouted, "No contract, no shows!"

"The seven-word mantra is, 'When you get paid, we get paid," said Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America East.

The "Today Show" is not directly affected by the strike because news writers are part of a different union.

In Los Angeles, writers also were planning to picket 14 studio locations in four-hour shifts from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day until a new deal is reached.

The contract between the 12,000-member Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producer expired Oct. 31. Talks that began this summer failed to produce much progress.

Writers and producers had gathered for negotiations Sunday at the request of a federal mediator.

The two sides met for nearly 11 hours before East Coast members of the writers union announced on their Web site that the strike had begun for their 4,000 members.

The first casualty of the strike would be late-night talk shows, which are dependent on current events to fuel monologues and other entertainment.

Daytime TV, including live talk shows such as "The View" and soap operas, which typically tape about a week's worth of shows in advance, would be next to feel the impact.

The strike will not immediately impact production of movies or prime-time TV programs. Most studios have stockpiled dozens of movie scripts, and TV shows have enough scripts or completed shows in hand to last until early next year.

AP Business Writer Gary Gentile in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Michael Moore seeks a cure for the ailing U.S. health-care system in his latest documentary, "Sicko."

The DVD, in stores Tuesday for $30, adds 80 minutes of Moore material to the 123-minute film.

"Sicko" goes beyond the problems facing the nearly 50 million Americans with no health insurance. It shares horror stories of insured Americans denied urgent treatment because of technicalities.

The Michigan muckraker blames greedy hospitals and drug and insurance companies. The remedy is free national health care, he argues.

"Sicko" made $24 million, pretty good for a documentary, but far less than Moore's previous film, 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which raked in $119 million.

Moore sticks to his signature cinematic style. He's on a quest for truth, roaming around and asking questions, supported by his sardonic narration. He blends in old film clips and news footage as he returns to past themes, mocking the right wing's fear mongering in particular.

The PG-13 film compares the profit-driven U.S. medical industry to the health care offered in Canada, England, France and Cuba. Moore stays a little too long in France, driving home the point that the French have more vacation time and other job perks. His amazement feels a bit condescending.

He's more heartfelt when he shows hospitals using taxis to dump homeless patients at shelters. "Who are we?" he says. "Is this what we've become?"

One DVD extra follows Moore as he discovers the most benevolent society of all: Norway. He cut it from the film, he says, because it was unbelievable.

More unthinkable are segments on an elderly couple bankrupted by medical bills and forced to move into their daughter's storage room in Colorado. Also, a girl who died untreated in an emergency room because, Moore says, it wasn't affiliated with her health plan.

Some say "Sicko" is Moore's funniest film yet. His comic tone does sugarcoat some of his hard-to-take points about the wretched state of our country

Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld
Sony

The much-hyped last episode of the much-loved NBC sitcom flopped, but this four-DVD box set of the ninth and final season shines. It has 13 hours of extras, from bloopers and deleted scenes to interviews, a ton for a show "about nothing." In a cast reunion, Jerry Seinfeld analyzes why the grand finale failed: "It was big. And we really didn't do big. Small was really our instrument that we played." In the 1997-98 season, Jerry dates a sentence finisher, George fakes a handicap to get a job, Elaine eats antique cake, and Kramer hires an intern. 24 episodes, 553 minutes, $50.

Heavens Fall
Timothy Hutton
Allumination FilmWorks

Timothy Hutton is excellent in this intense drama based on a true event in 1933. He plays Sam Leibowitz, a tenacious New York attorney arguing a controversial case in the segregated South. The U.S. Supreme Court granted a retrial to nine young black men convicted and sentenced to death for the rape of two white women on an Alabama train. The case of the Scottsboro Nine became national news and a cause celebre. This solidly acted, thoughtful 2006 independent film won two film festival awards. DVD extra: behind-the-scenes footage. PG-13, 105 minutes. $30.

The Best of the Colbert Report
Stephen Colbert
Comedy Central

Stephen Colbert doesn't just read the news to you. "I promise to feel the news at you," says the political satirist. He has devilish fun in the guise of a right-wing broadcast blowhard on a mission to make you see the world his way. Forget the truth. You need truthiness, his word, defined as truth that comes from the gut, not books. Just to review, gut = good, books = bad. This 160-minute DVD collects hilarious highlights from the late-night Comedy Central spoof, which debuted in October 2005 as a spinoff of "The Daily Show." $20.

A new planet and a new battle against impossible odds. You dodged asteroids and fought pirates just to get here. Conventional wisdom says to turn back, but that's not an option because there is a greater cause at stake. Plus, this planet can't be any worse than the previous three. So, you stop at the kiosk, max out your ammo and dash into a storm of hostile creatures and gunfire.

That is "Ratchet & Clank: Future Weapons of Destruction" in a nutshell.

It's the first PlayStation 3 installment of the classic gaming series featuring these two quirky characters. The duo is trying to stop a Cragmite named Tachyon from taking over the universe and making the Lomax species (Ratchet) extinct. The ensuing adventure is part Easter egg hunt and part wild goose chase across three planetary systems for a secret superweapon.

Fans of the series will be pleased that this version is not a huge departure from its predecessors. It benefits from the move to the current console generation by including upgraded audio with more vibrant and challenging environments. Considering the only time you are not being shot at is during the cut scenes, the action moves smoothly without lags in the animation.

So, when in battle, is it better to turn your enemies into penguins or whack them with an electric whip? A big part of the adventure is experimenting with the various weapons and gadgets. There are 24 weapon slots.

Switching from the "Negotiator," a rocket launcher, to the "Groovetron," a portable disco ball that forces enemies to stop and dance, is done with a push of a button and the analog stick. Some enemies are immune to certain weapons. As the game progresses, you find yourself relying on the same three weapons that work on anything.

"Ratchet & Clank" successfully uses the SIXAXIS controls during the minigames and stages scattered throughout the game. The most fun is gliding along on robotic wings and hacking doors by completing a circuit with a single metal ball in a maze. The HALO[swa: cq: ] jumps look nice but lack excitement.

Clank has his own sections, where with the help of little "Zoni" (sounds a lot like Sony after five hours of playing) he pieces together clues in areas that Ratchet can't reach. Also included are arena battles for cash, aerial fights in space and a "Simon says" pirate dance mode. This is a great start on a new console. Grade: B+

Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow
Sony PSP, Sony Entertainment, T (Teen)

Description: The second installment of government superagent Gabe Logan's adventures.

Features: Hardcore Syphon Filter fans will find few surprises. A deep list of weapons and gadgets is included. New underwater missions are undermined by suspect swimming controls. Once players complete the story mode, they can replay individual missions with alternative routes and weapons. The online multiplayer mode is full of options. Players can find a game, create a game or compete as their own agency cell in team-based competition. Grade: B

EA Playground
Nintendo Wii, EA Games, E (Everyone)

Description: Traditional playground games, plus a few extra choices, formatted for the Nintendo Wii motion controls.
Features: Eight games that have been staples of gym classes and schoolyard recess periods. The goal is to become king of the playground by defeating the other kids. Dodgeball is the highlight. All the games include special power boosts. When not playing a game, users can practice their Wii skills by dribbling a basketball or collecting bugs. The game is best when played against other humans. Grade C+

Flash Focus
Nintendo DS, Nintendo, E (Everyone)

Description: Series of games and exercises designed to maintain and improve visual recognition skills.
Features: Seventeen games/tasks split up into "core training" and "sports training" with rising degrees of difficulty. Users can create a daily training routine and track results over an extended period. The results are saved and charted on graphs. The individual games are not difficult to understand or to play. A basic eye-relaxation exercise is included. Grade: B-

The biggest moment during this season of "Dancing With the Stars" wasn't an image of beauty on the dance floor, but Marie Osmond hitting the floor.

Was she really overcome by stress, allergies and bad air, as she explained? Did she do it to gain sympathy votes so she could dance another day? Osmond's swoon sure got people talking about "Dancing" and gave it a buzz it needed.

This season, "Dancing" is shaping up as a show that has great ratings but is quiet when it comes to water-cooler chatter.

Since it premiered Sept. 24, ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" has ranked consistently among the top 10 shows. The performance show usually is the most-watched show that week. Last season, "Dancing" outranked every network show except "American Idol."

Sure, lots of people are watching. But last year's slate of contestants was more exciting. There was the stunning boxer Laila Ali; the camera caught the tender moment with her father, Muhammad Ali, watching from the audience. Former N'Syncher Joey Fatone flashed his million- watt grin and enjoyed a career boost that landed him as host of the nighttime game show "The Singing Bee." And speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno and partner Julianne Hough wowed the crowd last spring, taking top honors.

This year's crop isn't so dazzling. How many viewers had even heard of a Cheetah Girl before encountering Sabrina Bryan on "Dancing"? Models Josie Maran and Albert Reed and soap actor Cameron Mathison ("All My Children") weren't exactly household names. Maybe after so many seasons, "Dancing With the Stars" has run through all the available B- and C-listers and must throw its casting net into murkier waters.

The season has generated a bit of drama to go with the sequins. "Beverly Hills, 90210" alum Jennie Garth took a spill during one performance. Actress Jane Seymour left the show temporarily after the death of her mother, then missed a show when she had food poisoning. Judge Carrie Ann Inaba accused some contestants of performing illegal lifts during routines.

Through it all, the show has offered its same comforting buffet of gooey gowns and waltzes set to a plethora of pop songs.

Here's how "Dancing With the Stars" gets its groove on. Celebrities are paired with professional dance partners. Each week, couples perform a ballroom dance selected for them by the producers.

Three judges award scores between one and 10; a perfect combined score is 30. The judges' score is combined with viewers' votes, and the couple with the lowest total is voted off.

As the competition enters the home stretch, here is a midterm report designed to bring you up to speed with what's happened and what to expect.

Cutting in on the 'Dance' midway

For expert help, we turned to Jessica Todero, an instructor with Elegance in Ballroom and Latin Dance Studio in Chagrin Falls. Students there vote each week on who they think will be the next to exit on "Dancing."

Bryan's cut surprised Todero, who had predicted the Cheetah gal's youth and energy would take her to the final two.

The other losers were cut early because they had bad body rhythm or didn't grasp the fundamentals of footwork technique and frame quickly enough, Todero said.

Footwork refers to whether a dancer steps with the ball of the foot first, as in Latin dances, or with the heel first, which is required for ballroom dances. Stepping with the ball of the foot first creates the hip action that gives flair to the rumba, cha-cha, paso doble and other dances, she said.

Leg action refers to whether the knees are kept straight or bent. In the cha-cha, knees are straight to create hip action, Todero said. Dancers bend their knees and go up on their toes in the waltz.

"I think she's doing great," Todero said, predicting Brown will land in the top three.

Jane Seymour ("Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman") and partner Tony Dovolani. "She has great posture. She goes with the flow and makes it look good," Todero praised.

Cameron Mathison ("All My Children") and partner Edyta Sliwinska. Mathison's height and frame -- dancer talk for his arm posture and poise -- make him an ideal partner, Todero said. "He looks good on the dance floor," she said. Save him a seat in the final four.

On a July day in 1973, John Gorman arrived at WMMS FM/100.7 and found a chaotic music library, a jock smoking pot from a pipe and an executive who looked like a hippie from "Dragnet."

That was Gorman's welcome as music director to the Buzzard, as the station would come to be called. During Gorman's time there from 1973 to 1986, WMMS became a legendary powerhouse that helped break local acts and provided a pop-cultural soundtrack for millions of listeners.

Gorman has written a book about his WMMS days: "The Buzzard: Inside the Glory Days of WMMS and Cleveland Rock Radio -- a Memoir" (Gray and Co., $24.95) with Plain Dealer reporter Tom Feran.

Gorman, a media consultant, kicks off a local book-signing tour with an event at 7 p.m. Thursday at Joseph-Beth Booksellers at Legacy Village, followed by a 2 p.m. Saturday signing at Barnes and Noble Bookstore at Richmond Town Center. The full list of signings is at www.grayco.com.

The book is aimed at Clevelanders who grew up with WMMS as well as those who only have heard the tales.

"I want this book to appeal to people who weren't here when that was going on," said Gorman, 57, who had left a Boston job to work at WMMS.

He describes the station's renegade reputation, earned from its early hippie-flavored logo showing an elf under a mushroom, rivalries with other local stations, memorable promotions and WMMS-sponsored concerts.

It was fun because Cleveland was a great radio town, he said. "You didn't have any slouches in Cleveland. Everyone fought tooth and nail."

During Gorman's years, WMMS enjoyed profitability and high ratings. It also was a loose environment that attracted creative people, Gorman said. You might hear a horse whinny over the intercom. Ideas came together during inpromptu hallway meetings.

But he says the atmosphere deteriorated after the departure of a top executive at Malrite Communications, which owned WMMS. Interoffice politics ran rampant, and work was no fun. Gorman and several others left.

"It only took a year. It unraveled very quickly," he said.

Gorman applauded the station's recent decision to bag the Buzzard logo. The Buzzard represented a different era; the current station needs to create its own identity, he said.

"I think it's one of the smartest moves they've made," he said.

Wake-up call

WKYC Channel 3 is putting chief meteorologist Mark Nolan into a morning anchor chair. He'll be paired with Abby Ham, who anchors mornings at a Gannett station in Knoxville, Tenn. Channel 3 is a Gannett station.

Viewers knew changes were coming after John Anderson recently left "Channel 3 News Today" for Philadelphia. But Ham visited the Channel 3 newsroom for a tryout even before Anderson announced his departure. She did an audition show with Anderson and morning meteorologist Hollie Strano and inked her deal last week.

"Crazy! All so fast!" said Ham, calling from Knoxville.

Ham is an Atlanta native who started her career at a television station in Marietta, Ohio. She's moving here with her fiance; the couple are planning a June 2008 wedding in Knoxville.

It was expected that Channel 3 might hire from outside to fill Anderson's slot, though tapping a forecaster for a co-host is a surprise. But Nolan has news chops. He started his career in radio news and helped launch Channel 3's morning show in the early 1990s.

"Those are perfect traits to transfer over to the news desk," Andolsen said.

Meteorologist Betsy Kling will fill in for Nolan on the 6, 7 and 11 p.m. newscasts. Forecaster A.J. Colby will take over Kling's weekend duties temporarily.

Will the format of "Channel 3 News Today" change? Will reporters Obie Shelton, Barbara Galthier and Jacque Smith stay with the show? When will Nolan and Ham be on the air? It remains to be seen, Andolsen said.

"You don't make changes overnight," she said. "You need to have a plan for it to work. It is a plan that is unfolding and will unfold quickly."

Happening here

"Star Trek: The Original Series" beams into selected Northeast Ohio theaters Tuesday, Nov. 13, and Thursday, Nov. 15. The local screenings are part of a na tionwide event.

Fans will see digitally remastered versions of the 1960s television episodes "The Menagerie" parts 1 and 2. Times are 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13, and 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Nov. 15. Tickets are $12.50 at theater box offices or at www.fathomevents.com. Go to the Fathom Events Web site for a list of participating theaters.

"The Menagerie" is a story-within-a-story that includes footage from the first "Star Trek" pilot. In the framing story, first officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is on trial for taking the Enterprise to a prohibited planet, Talos IV. Once there, the Enterprise crew receives images of the ship's first visit to Talos under Capt. Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter).

Will he win?

Shawn Walz of Lakewood is a contestant on Thursday's edition of "The Price Is Right." The game show airs at 11 a.m. weekdays on WOIO Channel 19.

Country music is in the midst of a surge it hasn't seen since Garth Brooks shamelessly drove the listening world down Thunder Road.

Not surprisingly, the Garth Man is back in the fold, ending -- or at least interrupting -- his self-imposed retirement to raise his daughters with the hit single "More Than a Memory." It's one of four new songs on a CD/DVD box set that coincidentally comes out just in time for the holiday shopping season.

But this time, Garth is riding the coattails of a year that has seen country music as the brightest spot in the music industry, the one genre on the upswing. And the reason for that upswing is the popularity of country concert tours.

Tim and Faith, Kenny, Keith, Brad, Toby. You don't need last names to know who they are, and their tours played to bank vault-busting crowds all over the United States.

Wednesday, the Country Music Association honors those who are responsible for the surge. Here are our predictions and why:

Why: The guy has learned to use his guitar chops to accent his vocals . . . and he writes the best songs in country music. Besides, two of the best male voices -- Ronnie Dunn and Gary Levox -- are part of groups, so they're not eligible, which hardly seems fair.

Why: Tradition. By rights, this should go to Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush of Sugarland.

Single of the Year

Nominees (award to goes to artist and producer): "Anyway," sung and produced by Martina McBride; "Before He Cheats," Carrie Underwood, produced by Mark Bright; "Lost in This Moment," Big & Rich, produced by Big Kenny Alphin and John Rich; "Ticks," Brad Paisley, produced by Frank Rogers and Chris DuBois; "Wrapped," George Strait, produced by Strait and Tony Brown.

Winner: "Before He Cheats."

Why: Anyone who votes otherwise risks a Louisville Slugger to both headlights. It is the best venom song since "Fist City" by Loretta Lynn.

Album of the Year

Nominees (award goes to artist and producer): "5th Gear," Brad Paisley, produced by Frank Rogers and Chris DuBois; "It Just Comes Natural," George Strait, produced by Strait and Tony Brown; "Long Trip Alone," Dierks Bentley, produced by Brett Beavers; "Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing," Keith Urban, produced by Urban and Dann Huff; "These Days," Vince Gill, produced by Gill, John Hobbs and Justin Niebank.

Winner: "5th Gear."

Why: There's not a bad song on it. As a matter of fact, it's the best country album since . . . "Mud on the Tires," Paisley's previous effort.

Song of the Year

Nominees (award goes to songwriter and publisher): "Anyway," written by Martina McBride, Brad Warren and Brett Warren, published by Delemmava Music and Bucky and Clyde Music; "Before He Cheats," written by Josh Kear and Chris Tompkins, published by That Little House Music, Might Under Dog Music/Sony and ATV Cross Keys; "Give It Away," written by Bill Anderson, Buddy Cannon and Jamey Johnson, published by Sony, ATV Tree, Mr. Bubba Music, Slow Run Music and EMI Blackwood; "Lost In This Moment," written by John Rich, Keith Anderson and Rodney Clawson, published by Rich Texan Music, Warner-Tamerlane, Writer's Extreme, EMI April Music and Romeo Cowboy; "Stupid Boy," written by Dave Berg, Deanna Bryant and Sarah Buxton, published by Song Planet, That Little House Music, Cal IV Songs and BergBrain Music.

Winner: "Before He Cheats."

Why: You gotta love a song that has a line about someone "dabbing on $3 worth of that bathroom Polo."

Winner and why: Wins to the left, wins to the right. Wins to Jimmy Buffett and pals. Of course, the real travesty is that the true vocal event of the year, Tim McGraw singing the painfully poignant "If You're Reading This," isn't even nominated. Gee, ya think that might be because it happened on the rival Academy of Country Music awards show?

Why: Videos are always so much cooler online, and a lot of people have watched this one that way, courtesy of CMT and Great American Country. Alexander's skills, honed in years on "Seinfeld," pair perfectly with Paisley's writing and his surprising gift for comic timing. And hey, it's got Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

There's nothing odd about a network thinking green during a sweeps month. It is, after all, the color of those advertising dollars generated by big ratings.

Sweeps periods determine what local stations can charge for commercial time. So the networks are thinking green, all right, and that's why November is a month of stunt casting, plot shocks and, yes, very special episodes.

But fourth-place NBC also is thinking green in an Al Gore, environmentally conscious, inconvenient-truth kind of way. It's the highest-profile hype move of the month. Starting at 8 p.m. Monday with "Chuck" and concluding at 10 p.m. Friday with "Las Vegas," the Peacock Network is presenting a five-night run of green-themed episodes.

That's right. In a town that raised conspicuous consumption to an art form, all of NBC's Monday-Friday comedies, dramas, game shows and reality programs will go green.

A green week filled with guests

The shows include "The Bionic Woman" (9 p.m. Wednesday), which sends Jaime (Michelle Ryan) to an environmental conference in Paris. It includes "Scrubs" (9:30 p.m. Thursday), which finds Neil Flynn's Janitor determined to become Sacred Heart's environmental officer after watching "An Inconvenient Truth." It even includes "Deal or No Deal" (8 p.m. Friday), which begins with host Howie Mandel riding a cruiser bike to work and features a guest appearance by the original "Bein' Green" guy, Kermit the Frog.

But when it comes to stunt casting, "30 Rock" (8:30 p.m. Thursday) is on a roll for NBC's Green Week. Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) has cooked up the idea for an eco-friendly network mascot named Greenzo (played by former "Friends" star David Schwimmer). The episode also features guest appearances by Meredith Vieira and a certain former vice president in possession of an Oscar, an Emmy and a Nobel Peace Prize.

NBC's parent company is General Electric, which also owns Universal Studios. So the slogan for the upcoming week is, "Green Is Universal." Get it?

The G.E.-NBC-Universal world also includes such cable channels as USA Network, Bravo, Sci Fi Channel, CNBC and MSNBC.

A council to oversee the initiative

"Green Week" is more than a sweeps stunt, said Lauren Zalaznick, president of Bravo.

"It's a companywide program in association with G.E. to improve the environmental impact of all of our operations, to raise awareness about green issues and to stimulate real change in our industry," Zalaznick said. "As part of that, we also formed the NBC Universal Green Council, and our task is to access and monitor the company's ongoing initiatives."

Zalaznick heads up the NBC Universal Green Council, which asked all network producers to cook up a green-theme episode for the upcoming week.

"We did a whole episode last year all about saving the world," said Greg Garcia, creator and executive producer of "My Name Is Earl" (8 p.m. Thursday). "So my suggestion was, let's save the Earth and recycle that episode and just put it on again."

The Green Council wasn't wild about that idea. Zalaznick is trying to strike a slightly more serious note on this save-the-Earth stuff.

For some NBC shows, however, living up to this responsibility has been particularly challenging.

"We're screwed," said John Krasinski, who plays sales rep Jim Halpert on "The Office" (9 p.m. Thursday). "We're a paper company. We're going to get hammered."

Garcia had another helpful thought NBC was certain to despise: "If they turn off their TVs, think about how much energy that will save."

What the other networks are doing

There are, of course, other November sweeps stunts on other networks. Some very special episodes on the horizon:

"The Simpsons" (8 p.m. Sunday, WJW Channel 8) -- Fox's long-running animated series unveils its 18th annual "Treehouse of Horror" episode, followed at 8:30 p.m. by a "Family Guy" special and at 9 p.m. by the 100th episode of "Family Guy."

"Cold Case" (9 p.m. Sunday, WOIO Channel 19) -- The CBS crime drama airs its 100th episode, which looks into the mystery of a woman who disappeared on the October 1938 night of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast.

"Prison Break" (8 p.m. Monday, Channel 8) -- Michael, on the run, gets a special run of two back-to-back episodes, during which he learns of Sara's murder.

"NCIS" (8 p.m. Tuesday, Channel 19) -- The CBS drama promises the most emotional, shocking and soul-searching run of episodes ever for Gibbs (Mark Harmon), who agrees to help a childhood friend of his daughter.

Here was a guy who didn't just embrace the rock 'n' roll lifestyle -- he wrote the how-to guide. In his prime, the piano-pounding singer, aka "The Killer," was the very picture of wild-eyed abandon, a hellion with great hair, a voice to match and two blurs for hands.

After years of life in the fast lane, however, the situation appeared grim when he wound up in a Memphis, Tenn., hospital in 1981 with a hemorrhaging stomach ulcer.

While family and friends prayed for him, Lewis sent for his pals Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson.

"I flew in there to see him, but John was afraid of him," Kristofferson recalls. "Only thing I ever saw John afraid of!

"Jerry Lee said he was finished with drinking and he was only gonna do gospel songs."

A few months later, Lewis was on the road again. Before a show in New Jersey, as Kristofferson looked on, Lewis downed a bottle of whiskey and warmed up with Jimmie Rodgers and Al Jolson oldies.

So much for Lewis' vow to mend his ways.

"Some habits are hard to break," says Kristofferson, set to emcee a tribute concert Saturday night at Playhouse Square's State Theatre in honor of Lewis, who is expected to attend. Among the other performers on the bill are Cowboy Jack Clement, Chrissie Hynde, NRBQ's Terry Adams, Shelby Lynne and George Thorogood. Also scheduled to appear are Lewis' sister Linda Gail Lewis and his cousin, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

The show is the climax of "Whole Lotta Shakin': The Life & Music of Jerry Lee Lewis," a weeklong salute. It's the 12th annual installment of the American Music Masters series, presented by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in conjunction with Case Western Reserve University.

Lewis, who turned 72 in September, is the first living musician to be toasted as part of the series, which previously has feted the likes of Woody Guthrie, Buddy Holly, Lead Belly, Sam Cooke and Roy Orbison. Lewis, who rarely speaks to the press, declined to be interviewed for this story.

Lewis and Kristofferson became friendly after Lewis covered a few of Kristofferson's tunes, starting with "Once More With Feeling," co-written by Shel Silverstein.

"Shel and I were sitting in [record producer] Jerry Kennedy's office with Jerry Lee and listening to the song over and over," Kristofferson says. "I remember Shel and I going, 'Geez, can you believe this?' And Jerry Lee said, 'Killer, if you wanna talk, go outside!'

"He can sing anything. . . . He's a national treasure."

One take, 6 million sold

Lewis wandered into the Memphis headquarters of Sun Records in 1956, hoping to catch the ear of Sam Phillips, the indie-label impresario who launched Elvis Presley's career.

Phillips was out, although producer Cowboy Jack Clement was in the studio. The receptionist told him there was a man up front who claimed he could play the piano like Chet Atkins played the guitar.

"Well, that sounds interesting," Clement said. "Send him on back."

He rolled tape while Lewis ran through a couple of numbers. Upon hearing the results, Phillips was sufficiently impressed to have Lewis booked for a formal recording session, even if guitar-driven rock 'n' roll was all the rage, not ivory-tickling mayhem.

Lewis nailed his Top 5 single "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" (previously recorded by Big Maybelle) in one take. It went on to sell 6 million copies.

Lewis was in the studio with Carl Perkins when they were joined by Presley and Cash for an impromptu jam session. The foursome was dubbed "The Million Dollar Quartet."

More hits quickly followed for Lewis, including "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless."

"The thing I liked most about Jerry Lee was he was totally uninhibited," Clement says. "You give him an audience of even one, and he'd give you the whole deal."

His showmanship was second to none. Long before Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar, Lewis created a sensation by anointing his piano with gasoline and setting it ablaze with a match.

"Follow that," Lewis once told Chuck Berry, who had the misfortune of going on after Lewis in concert -- or so the story goes.

"My first job out with him was a club in Waco, Texas," says guitarist Kenny Lovelace, who has been backing Lewis since 1967.

"At the end of 'Whole Lotta Shakin',' he always kicked his piano stool back. I wasn't thinking about it. I was concentrating on the music.

"He kicked the stool back -- boy, caught me right between the knees! There was no blood, but it got my attention. I never made that mistake again."

Back then, they might do 25 gigs a month. These days, Lewis does about 40 dates a year.

"He still kicks the stool over every once in a while," says Lovelace, who is taking part in the American Music Masters salute. "With Jerry, you just never know what he's gonna do. It never gets boring."

Gospel music, boogie-woogie beat

Growing up in the small town of Ferriday, La., Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart were inseparable.

Asked how they used to amuse themselves, Swaggart replies: "Mostly in the wrong ways. If there was devilment, we were into it."

He once came across Lewis crying on the last day of school.

"I failed," Lewis said, brandishing a report card filled with F's.

They went to have a talk with Lewis' third-grade teacher.

"Here's the truth: Jerry Lee's parents move so many times, when he gets out of school each night, he doesn't even know where home is," Swaggart told her.

"I know all the answers -- I just happened to be out the day you gave the test," Lewis added, in his defense.

"After listening to our spiel, she took the report card back . . . and passed him," Swaggart says.

When it came to music, Lewis was a quick study. He was around 10 when he took straight to a secondhand upright piano brought home by his father.

"I loved to stand by the piano and listen to him," says Linda Gail Lewis, the younger of Lewis' two sisters. An older brother was killed by a drunken driver when Lewis was 3.

"Jerry always did some gospel music," Linda Gail Lewis says. "In church, Mama was the song leader and Jerry played whenever he was available."

With a laugh, she adds: "He wasn't always available."

Jerry Lee Lewis briefly attended Bible college, only to be expelled after he played the hymn "My God Is Real" with a boogie-woogie beat.

After he found his calling in rock 'n' roll, he shared his newfound wealth with his family.

"When he got his first check from Sam Phillips, he bought us a new house, a new Cadillac and new clothes," Linda Gail Lewis says. She was still in her teens when she began singing with her brother on tour. They later recorded a duets album.

"The side of him that doesn't get mentioned enough is the fact that he's a wonderful human being," Linda Gail Lewis says.

"He's generous. He's unselfish. And he's kind.

"Of course, then there's the other side. Like any healthy young man, he was a bit wild in the rock 'n' roll days, because he could be."

Lawyers, guns and money

Lewis' popularity took a dive after he married his 13-year-old cousin, Myra Gale Brown, in December 1957.

"I really felt sorry for him," Kristofferson says. "He hadn't done anything wrong, really. He'd married somebody he loved. The fact she was his cousin didn't register on him like it did on other people.

"He took his lumps. He went from being a headliner and making $1,000 a night to making $100 a night. He was blackballed. But he worked his way back up and never complained."

Lewis and Myra divorced in 1970. By then, he was enjoying a comeback on the country-music charts. Today, their daughter, Phoebe Lewis, oversees his career.

Jerry Lee Lewis is no stranger to turmoil and tragedies, including struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction and the deaths of two of his four children and two of his wives. (Lewis has been married six times.)

He accidentally shot his bass player, Butch Owens, in the chest in 1976. Owens lived to tell the tale.

Several weeks later, police arrested Lewis after he showed up at Graceland in the middle of the night, waving a gun and demanding to see Presley. Lewis "was only going there to try to help Elvis, because Elvis told him he was depressed," Linda Gail Lewis says.

"There were times when I worried about him," Lovelace says. "I didn't know if he was going to make it or not.

"Somehow, he knew when to stop."

Lewis doesn't like to dwell on his wild days, although he's always up for a conversation about the Bible, Lovelace says.

"He's a very religious guy," Lovelace says.

Lewis and Swaggart remained close, even as their paths diverged. (Country singer Mickey Gilley is their cousin, too.)

"As a minister of the gospel, it's my desire that everybody would live for the Lord," Swaggart says. "Jerry Lee made his decision, and we supported him to the extent that we prayed for him and we loved him, and continue to do so.

"He's not had an easy life."

A lifetime of myths, nearly all of them true

Lewis was among the first inductees enshrined by the Rock Hall in 1986.

With all due respect to Chuck Berry and Little Richard, the title of Lewis' 2006 album just about says it all: "Last Man Standing." Against the odds, this seemingly indestructible survivor has outlived most of his contemporaries from the dawn of rock 'n' roll, including the other Million Dollar Quartet members.

"I'm a Christian, and so is my brother," Linda Gail Lewis says. "We believe when the Lord calls you, you're gonna go -- and if he ain't calling you, you ain't going.

"It's God's will for him still to be here, and I'm so thankful for that. Every time he sits down at the piano and plays and sings, he's blessing people with his talent."

On "Last Man Standing," Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, various Rolling Stones and others join forces with Lewis for a series of star-powered collaborations.

He teams up with Kristofferson for "The Pilgrim: Chapter 33," a twangy ode to rugged individualism. "He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction / Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home," they sing in scruffy two-part harmony. The lyrics strike you as tailor-made for Lewis, and it's no accident.

"When I wrote the song, he was definitely one of the guys I had in mind," Kristofferson says. "It was about him and, oh, Johnny Cash and other people who had lots of sides to their personality, some of them self-destructive.

"American Gangster" features two A-list actors: Denzel Washington, probably America's best and biggest movie star; and Russell Crowe, one of the industry's go-to guys. It was directed by Ridley Scott ("Gladiator"), produced by Brian Grazer ("A Beautiful Mind") and written by Steven Zaillian ("Schindler's List").

All of these gentlemen have won Oscars, been nominated for a bunch of Oscars or both.

Yet "American Gangster," based on the rise and fall of real-life drug dealer Frank Lucas and by far one of the most anticipated films of the season, is just OK.

Not great, not awful, it offers a fascinating glimpse of the drug trade in the late '60s and early '70s. But for a film so grounded in its characters -- Washington as the heroin king of New York and Crowe as Richie Roberts, a drug enforcement cop with Serpico-like ethics -- it offers few insights about these volatile men and few compelling moments.

Based on a New York Magazine article by Mark Jacobson, the story of Lucas' journey is the more interesting. His business model was simple: Sell wicked powerful stuff at half the price of the competition. And cut out the middleman by traveling to Thailand personally (with the war ablaze in Vietnam) to obtain thousands of kilos of smack.

Lucas cares about his mother and brothers and is dignified and smart. (Should we be rooting for a man who creates a generation of junkies and shoots people in the head to drive home a point?)

"American Gangster" examines racial fault lines (no one can believe a black dude in Harlem is more powerful than the Cosa Nostra) and extensive police corruption (three quarters of the Narcotics Special Investigations Unit is on the take).

It is a lengthy saga of epic proportions, a true American success story. But Scott and company tried to tell too much, with too many under-realized characters. It's a movie truism: Unless you're David Lean or Francis Coppola you really need to watch those running times and character counts.

The bad guy and the good guy lead juxtaposed lives: Lucas committing unparalleled crimes while safeguarding his family and attending church; Roberts an unrelenting straight arrow with a dysfunctional personal life.

But the characters evolve separately on screen, denying us a Denzel-Russell showdown until about two hours and 20 minutes in. It's like one of those Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan movies where they don't meet until the end. The two leads are as overwhelmed by the breadth of the story as the audience.

Marc Cohn spent only a day in the hospital after he was shot in the head in August 2005 by a would-be carjacker following a concert in Denver, although the healing process has been ongoing.

"From what I can tell, post-traumatic stress doesn't completely go away," said the singer-songwriter with the soulful voice and poetic way with words.

"I still can have a nightmare or a seemingly inexplicable reaction if anything scares me. . . . But it's gotten much better."

Cohn, a former Clevelander, sings about his new lease on life on "Join the Parade," his first new album in nearly a decade.

"The writing of these songs . . . was an enormous part of my recovery," he said during a phone interview last month from his home in New York City. "It really helped to be able to write very directly about what I was feeling and what I was going through."

An uplifting highlight, "Live Out the String," takes its opening lines ("Maybe life is curious to see what you would do / With the gift of being left alive") from an e-mail Cohn received after the shooting from Michael Silverstone, a longtime pal from Northeast Ohio.

"We had a band called Doanbrook Hotel, then I followed him to Oberlin College, where we were roommates and played in coffeehouses," said Cohn.

The Tom Waits-ish "Dance Back from the Grave" offers a message of hope to New Orleans as it continues to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

You'll find a bit of local flavor in another tune. "From the Erie lake / To the hills that shake / I've been haunted on every coast," Cohn sings on "Giving Up the Ghost," a poignant waltz featuring Shelby Lynne on harmony vocals.

"Throughout my career, I've written from different vantage points about probably the biggest event of my life -- the death of my mother when I was a 2½-year-old boy," said Cohn, 48.

"Every time I think about it, I see Cleveland. . . . It still informs the way I look at almost anything I write about. 'Giving Up the Ghost' is just one more lyric I seemed to have in me when I actually was trying to stop writing about the loss."

The Beachwood High School graduate (Class of '77) still has family in the area, including his stepmother and an older brother.

During his formative years, Cohn became obsessed with music.

"If I listen to [Van Morrison's] 'Moondance' or [Jackson Browne's] 'Late for the Sky,' even today, I'm reminded of why I wanted to be what I am," Cohn said.

"I still buy 10 to 15 records a month, minimum. But putting in the effort to listen to a lot of records with the depth they deserve is difficult. . . . I'm married and I have four kids now."

Cohn and Elizabeth Vargas, co-anchor of ABC's "20/20," tied the knot in 2002. Their sons Zachary and Sam are 4 and 1, respectively. Cohn also has a son and a daughter from a previous marriage: Max, 16, and Emily, 12.

Cohn's self-titled 1991 debut album featured the Top 20 hit "Walking in Memphis" and earned him a Grammy for best new artist. Rounding out his discography are two other studio efforts, "The Rainy Season" (1993) and "Burning the Daze" (1998).

"Silver Thunderbird," a keeper off Cohn's first album, immortalized his father ("The man with the plan and the pocket comb. . ."), who died when Cohn was 12.

Dad was a long-suffering Cleveland Indians fan.

"He spent a lot of his recreational hours just yelling at the television," Cohn recalled, laughing.

We've got interim grades for television's freshman class of 2007-08. Welcome to the school of hard knocks. Three of the 28 newcomers already have flunked out. It's a long school year, though, and the other failing rookies still have plenty of time to turn those grades around. And star pupils shouldn't get cocky. Two years ago at this time, ABC's "Commander in Chief" was the No. 1 new show but was gone before the season was over.

The first number is the overall rank. The second is the Nielsen rating. The third is the number of times it's aired in its regular time slot as of Oct. 28.

"Private Practice" 13 ABC 8.9 5 A- The "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff looks healthy, but there has been gradual viewer defection week to week, and last week it slipped out of the top 20 -- cause for concern, not alarm.

"Pushing Daisies" 27 ABC 7.2 4 B+ There was a significant viewer drop-off after the quirky drama's premiere, but the last three airings have drawn a steady number.

"Bionic Woman" 32 NBC 6.9 5 B+ Not posting heroic numbers, but pretty muscular for fourth-place NBC, on a night, Wednesday, that has been a failing subject for the network. 
"Women's Murder Club" 33 ABC 6.8 3 B+ Friday is a ratings-challenged night for all the networks, so this is somewhat grading on a curve.

"Dirty Sexy Money" 34 ABC 6.7 5 B+ ABC has five of the six highest-rated newcomers, and three of them are on Wednesday night: "Pushing Daisies," "Private Practice" and this slick soapy drama.

"Cane" 37 CBS 6.5 5 B Jimmy Smits' mix of soap and South Florida intrigue is making the grade as the top-rated CBS newcomer.

"Big Shots" 40 ABC 6.3 5 D The class ranking looks good until you realize this dimwitted drama about CEOs is losing about 55 percent of the "Grey's Anatomy" lead-in audience.

"The Big Bang Theory" 47 CBS 5.6 5 B Not making a lot of noise, but it's holding the lead-in audience from "How I Met Your Mother."

"Life" 47 NBC 5.6 5 C+ Showing signs of its title, but running third in the 10-11 Wednesday night time slot behind "CSI: NY" and "Dirty Sexy Money" is not good.

"Moonlight" 51 CBS 5.4 5 C- The acting on this vampire drama is anemic, and it's losing almost 13 percent of the "Ghost Whisperer" lead-in audience.

"Chuck" 54 NBC 5.2 5 C+ The mix of comedy and action has a devoted following and a likable cast. It has a good chance of lifting that grade.

"Carpoolers" 58 ABC 5.1 4 C- The comedy starring Jerry O'Connell is running far behind "NCIS," well behind "Bones," and neck and neck for third place with "The Biggest Loser." It needs to pick up some speed.

"Journeyman" 60 NBC 5.0 5 C- The time-tripping fantasy drama is stumbling in third place at 10 p.m. Monday, well behind "CSI: Miami" and "The Bachelor."

"Cavemen" 62 ABC 4.9 4 D So inevitable, even a network executive can cancel it. The Neanderthal comedy has dropped in the rankings every week.

"Back to You" 62 Fox 4.9 5 B- It's not making the top 50, but has improved Fox's performance in the time period. The network has responded by giving it a full-season order.

"Kid Nation" 65 CBS 4.7 5 D The icky reality show is running fourth in its time, behind "Deal or No Deal" and two other newcomers, "Pushing Daisies" and "Back to You."

"K-Ville" 69 Fox 4.4 5 D+ The New Orleans crime drama is an expensive show running in fourth place. That spells trouble.

"Viva Laughlin" 75 CBS 4.2 1 F Already gone. It didn't take CBS long to realize this embarrassing musical mystery would never make the grade.

Rewind to July 1999, somewhere in the swamps of New Jersey -- or, more accurately, Continental Airlines Arena. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were headlining the first of 15 sold-out shows there, kicking off their first North American tour in a decade. When 20,000 fans raised their fists to punctuate the first euphoric "Whoa!" during "Born to Run," the effect was electrifying.

Take it from an eyewitness: It made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Literally.

Then again, we've come to expect nothing less when the Boss and his illustrious sidekicks have their mojo working.

Without those guys and the rest of the E Street Band (whose core solidified in the mid-1970s), would Springsteen be nowhere? No way. But he'd definitely be somewhere else.

Now, fresh from a couple of creative detours in other directions, Springsteen is back in business with the group, in all its unwieldy glory, renewing one of the most enduringly popular and successful partnerships in rock 'n' roll.

Asked during a 2005 interview with The Plain Dealer if he could foresee going back to a leaner, meaner E Street Band at some point, Springsteen replied:

"No, because everyone took many roads, and we all arrived at this particular location. The guys and girls who are there now, that's the E Street Band.

"It was an organic growth, in that it just moved in its own direction.

"I can't ever imagine -- I mean, would I ever play in a smaller band unit at some point, in some other type of project? I might, depending on what music I wrote.

"I leave all the doors open. I listen to the music, and I try to go where it takes me."

'It sounded like they were never apart'

In 2005, the music led to a somber, stripped-down solo album, "Devils & Dust." Last year, Springsteen changed gears for "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," a fun collection of old-timey songs popularized by folkie Pete Seeger.

Neither of those projects involved the E Street Band.

"Springsteen has lots of different musical paths he needs to follow," said Bob Santelli, author of the book "Greetings From E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" and a former Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum executive.

Santelli caught a tour rehearsal by Springsteen and the E Street Band in September.

"It sounded like they were never apart," Santelli said. "They've been playing together so long, coming together again is pretty easy for them."

Springsteen took an extended break from the band starting in 1989. Three years later, he released a pair of uneven albums, "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town," followed by "The Ghost of Tom Joad" in 1995.

Springsteen resumed touring with the E Street Band in 1999. The group backed him on his 9/11-inspired album "The Rising," released in 2002, and his latest No. 1 album, "Magic."

Their recent collaborations have been enriched by Springsteen's extracurricular activities, Santelli said.

"More than most other artists, Springsteen is a product of American music," Santelli said. "The music he plays represents the broad landscape of American music. Blues, folk music, country music -- all of these are components of what Springsteen is.

"Most of them work well with the E Street Band, but not all of them.

"There are opportunities for him to explore new ideas with other musicians or solo, then bring them back to the E Street Band. He comes back with a renewed sense of energy."

The E Street Band "wasn't just a great rock group or a street gang," U2's Bono said during his speech inducting Springsteen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. "It was a brotherhood. . . . Bruce surrounded himself with fellow believers."

The brotherhood wasn't enshrined in the Rock Hall alongside Springsteen, although he made a point of bringing the band onstage with him during the induction ceremony.

Right now is all that matters

For all its virtues, the E Street Band has been a monkey on Springsteen's back at times.

"Many fans who love him with the E Street Band are utterly not interested in the rest of what he does," said veteran music journalist and Springsteen biographer Dave Marsh.

"He put together a great band in '92 and '93, with the best vocal support he ever had and a really different kind of drummer [Zachary Alford] with a metal-funk approach. Fans ran screaming from it.

"It's unfortunate some fans aren't open to more of what Bruce has to offer."

But enough about bygones. And while you're at it, never mind the future. For Springsteen, what counts is right here, right now, Marsh said.

"We're seeing for the first time ever in rock 'n' roll somebody who is almost 60 years old [Springsteen is 58] doing some of his most creative work ever . . . with his long-term collaborators," Marsh said. "They're the collaborators he seems most comfortable with, the ones who bring him a tool kit or a palette he uses well."

Make no mistake, however: Just because Springsteen is flanked by a familiar supporting cast these days, don't expect them to stick to familiar territory in concert. The setlist changes from show to show, although lately they've consistently dusted off rarities such as "Thundercrack" and drawn heavily from the new album.

"I've learned . . . not to have any preconceptions about what Bruce might do," E Street Band drummer Weinberg said in a 2001 interview with The Plain Dealer. "Bruce is our fearless leader and we have the ultimate faith and trust and love for him."

Night after night, they feel the love from audiences in those packed arenas, too.

"They get something out of the experience, something money can't buy," Weinberg said. "You really are all in it together."

As Springsteen sings on "The Ties That Bind," an oldie he and the E Street Band fittingly have been revisiting on this go-round:

We're runnin' now
But, darlin', we will stand in time
To face the ties that bind. . . .